The Halloween franchise has perhaps the most convoluted history of any slasher movie series. Even if you disregard the 2007 reboot and its sequel, the first eight films still have such a warped continuity that it’s hard to get your head around it all – with various deaths and resurrections for Jamie Lee Curtis’ heroine Laurie Strode and, of course, her infamous stalker, Michael Myers.
2018’s upcoming reinvention of the series was always expected to ignore the majority of what had come before, then. It was assumed that, like 1998’s Halloween: H20, it would only use the 1978 original and Halloween II as its springboard. It turns out, however, that the 40th anniversary movie will cut out even more than we thought.
John Carpenter spoke to Stereo Gum recently and revealed that the new film will disregard every single sequel and be based squarely on the first installment.
“It’s kind of a… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s almost an alternative reality. It picks up after the first one and it pretends that none of the others were made. It’s gonna be fun. There’s a really talented director and it was well-written. I’m impressed.”
If you’re up on your Halloween history, you’ll know that this will totally change the franchise. Halloween II is perhaps the most notable of the sequels as it’s the first film to confirm that Laurie is Michael Myers’ secret sister. This went on to become the bedrock of the series’ mythology. It seems that 2018’s Halloween will chuck all of that out, though, and go back to the blank canvas set up in the 1978 version.
Fans annoyed by this press of the reset button can take comfort in the fact that Carpenter calls the new movie “an alternative reality,” so it’s not like those previous installments have been totally wiped out of existence. If there’s a need, future films could potentially resume that original continuity, though we don’t expect that to happen.
Halloween stars Jamie Lee Curtis, with Judy Greer in talks to play Laurie’s daughter, Karen Strode. David Gordon Green is directing and it’s set to slash its way into cinemas on October 19th, 2018.