Blumhouse Productions has announced that original Halloween director John Carpenter will be executive producing the newest sequel for the franchise. He may also score the film, though negotiations on that have not been completed. It will be his first involvement since 1982’s Halloween III.
Carpenter has teamed up with Miramax, Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Pictures and Malek Akkad to produce the film. Akkad’s father, Moustapha, was a producer of the original Halloween films, producing the first eight. Malek Akkad was involved in later installments and produced the Rob Zombie remake and sequel.
“Thirty-eight years after the original Halloween I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all,” said Carpenter in a statement.
“Halloween is one of those milestone films that inspired everyone at our company to get into the world of scary movies,” said Blum. “The great Malek Akkad and John Carpenter have a special place in the hearts of all genre fans and we are so excited that Miramax brought us together. We cannot wait to find and collaborate with the right filmmaker to give Halloween fans the movie they deserve.”
Carpenter co-wrote, directed and scored the original 1978 film. The film was a sleeper hit and one of the most profitable independent films of all time. It started the Halloween franchise as well as introducing the world to lead actress Jamie Lee Curtis and villain Michael Myers. It is credited as ushering in the modern slasher genre.
Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (1978)
Carpenter worked on the first two sequels, Halloween II and Halloween III. The third film attempted to leave the Michael Myers plot and turn the franchise into an anthology following stories set on Halloween. The film was not successful and Carpenter left the franchise, which resumed focus on Myers.
Dread Central reported the news after several horror outlets were invited to Blumhouse offices for an announcement. There they were greeted with the news as Blum and Carpenter took to the stage to talk about the project.
“So… I decided, after bitching for years and years about Halloween sequels, I would come aboard and shepherd this thing,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter and the team of the newest Halloween. Photo credit: Eric Charbonneau
“He’s going to godfather us, be involved with this movie creatively, and in the initial few conversations that we’ve had with directors, they’ve felt the same way we did: No one wanted to do this without John,” said Blum.
Both Carpenter and Blum talked about the film returning to basics.
“We’re probably going to go back to the original tradition that we started. It’s kind of gone astray. I feel like the remakes maybe went off somewhere that I didn’t want them to go,” Carpenter said. “Michael Myers is not a character. He is a force of nature. He is not a person. He’s part supernatural, part human. He’s like the wind, an evil wind. If you start straying away from that, and you get into explaining, then you’ve lost. So hopefully we can guide it back in the original direction.”
“I think we want to take it back to basics and not get into too much backstory,” Blum added.
Carpenter continued, “The biggest challenge is to be true to the original spirit of the movie. Don’t get carried away. Tell a simple story. Tell it right. The original Halloween was made for very little money and it was a little, scary tale. That’s what we should be doing.”
As of now the film is still in early development, though production will reportedly be fast tracked to be released on the target date of October 2017. The producers, however, still don’t know what form the movie will take, be it a sequel, prequel or remake.
“We can’t tell you yet… because we don’t know,” said Carpenter. “What I can tell you is, it’ll be a movie.”
