Halloween Writers Recall Pitching Their Sequel To John Carpenter

When it comes to old-school horror, there is really only one master: John Carpenter.

So you can imagine David Gordon Green and Danny McBride’s trepidation when they pitched their idea for a full-blown sequel to Halloween. But not just any sequel, for Green and McBride planned to rework the ending of Carpenter’s 1978 classic so that they were able to effectively ignore the likes of Season of the Witch and Return of Michael Myers.

All in all, their calculated risk paid off dividends. Halloween drew near-unanimous praise from film critics and banked a cool $253 million at the global box office. Indeed, there have even been rumblings of a potential sequel getting the green light from Blumhouse. But before all that, Green and McBride sought the blessing of John Carpenter. Naturally, they were riddled with doubt and nerves, as Green tells VICE News:

Danny and I went to film school together. Cut to 20 years after graduation, I get an email from Jason Blum, the producer, asking if I’m interested in working with him on a reboot of the Halloween franchise.

Co-writer Danny McBride went on to discuss that defining moment when John Carpenter agreed to meet over the possibility of Halloween 2.0. And while they had their doubts, Carpenter was enthused about the direction in which McBride and Green were headed – so much so, in fact, that he agreed to compose some new music for the 2018 slasher.

Here’s what McBride told VICE:

I don’t think in my head I ever thought we’d actually be able to make the film, so it became very real when we started walking up the front steps of John Carpenter’s office. I think I turned to David, and it was just this panic moment of realization of like, we’re about to meet John Carpenter and one of our heroes of filmmaking could quite possibly laugh in our face. And John just kind of said, ‘Alright, let’s hear it,’ and just wanted us to get down to business. As a fan, I think it took a while to kind of just get over that and feel a bit of ownership over it and not like you were just creating like fan fiction.

Halloween is now available across all the usual platforms, and while Blumhouse doesn’t currently own film rights to the sequel – at least not yet – it’s surely only a matter of time before Michael Myers is let loose once again.