Next year, Blumhouse belatedly delivers Halloween Kills, the second part in their trilogy of Michael Myers movies. 2018’s Halloween was the first installment in the original series – we’re not counting the Rob Zombie remake and its sequel – since 2002’s Halloween: Resurrection. But, once upon a time, there was another film in the franchise that was supposed to be made in the middle – Halloween: The Missing Years.Â
The brainchild of screenwriter Jake Wade Wall, this would’ve been the next movie after Resurrection but, chronologically, it’d be a prequel. Wall’s idea was to fill in the blanks of the killer’s life, both in terms of his childhood and exploring what exactly happened to him during the events of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, which is unique for being the only Halloween pic that Michael’s not in and Wall’s film would have explained why.
Set entirely in the Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, and taking place concurrently with H3, TMYÂ would have seen Myers get loose once again, but this time he would stay put in the psychiatric institution and murder his way through the staff and inmates. Flashbacks would have been interspersed into the action, digging into his lonely and troubled childhood locked in a padded cell.
Apparently, Wall’s goal was to add a more sympathetic edge to Michael. For instance, one character was a kindly nurse who the Shape showed mercy towards. Meanwhile, a recast Dr. Loomis was also to have featured.
The writer worked on the script for two years before Dimension Films pulled the plug on the project, preferring instead to push the reset button after the lacklustre reception to Resurrection. It’s interesting to note, though, that Rob Zombie also dived deeper into Myers’ origins, just as Missing Years would’ve done. In the end, we never got to find out how this lost Halloween movie would’ve turned out, but from what we can tell, it seems like it could’ve been one of the better ones.
