Save for a producer credit on the second and third one, John Carpenter hasn’t really had much to do with the Halloween franchise since bringing us the iconic Michael Myers first night of stalking and murder way back in 1978. Since then, it’s safe to say the series has floundered with eight increasingly lacklustre sequels, and then a Rob Zombie directed reboot in 2007, and a sequel two years later, completely missing the mark and dismissing everything that made the first movie so beloved. So, yeah, the years haven’t been kind to the franchise, but things are looking up, with Blumhouse Productions, the foremost studio for low budget horror with The Purge, Sinister, Insidious, and Paranormal Activity to their name, announcing at a special event held at their LA offices that they are co-finanacing, alongside Miramax and Trancas International (who produced a number of the Halloween movies before), a new Halloween movie. With the studios track record so far, that’s enough to get horror fans excited, but Blumhouse weren’t done just yet, revealing that Carpenter will be returning to the franchise as executive producer, and possibly score the new entry. As Calvin Candie once said, “you had my interest, now you have my attention”.
There is no word yet on whether this will be a sequel or reboot (back when the project was solely under the control of Miramar, there was talk of it being a ‘recalibration, whatever the hell that means), the legendary director did have this to say:
“We’re probably going to go back to the original traditions that we started with early on. It’s kind of gone astray a little bit. I thought maybe the remakes went off somewhere that I didn’t want ‘em to go. Michael Myers is not a character. He is a force of nature. He is not a person. He is part supernatural, part human. He’s like the wind. He’s an evil wind. When you start straying away from that and you get into explaining, you’re lost. So hopefully we can guide it back in that direction.”
Blumhouse head Jason Blum backed him up, saying they were going “back to the basics”, and y’know what, that’s enough for me. I’m not saying Blumhouse’s output has being perfect, but the good far outweighs the bad. The fact that they keep budgets low (their largest budget to date has been $10 million) meaning there is no better studio to take the series back to its roots.
Whatever it has in store for us, the new movie comes our way just in time for Halloween 2017.
There is no word yet on whether this will be a sequel or reboot (back when the project was solely under the control of Miramar, there was talk of it being a ‘recalibration, whatever the hell that means), the legendary director did have this to say:
“We’re probably going to go back to the original traditions that we started with early on. It’s kind of gone astray a little bit. I thought maybe the remakes went off somewhere that I didn’t want ‘em to go. Michael Myers is not a character. He is a force of nature. He is not a person. He is part supernatural, part human. He’s like the wind. He’s an evil wind. When you start straying away from that and you get into explaining, you’re lost. So hopefully we can guide it back in that direction.”
Blumhouse head Jason Blum backed him up, saying they were going “back to the basics”, and y’know what, that’s enough for me. I’m not saying Blumhouse’s output has being perfect, but the good far outweighs the bad. The fact that they keep budgets low (their largest budget to date has been $10 million) meaning there is no better studio to take the series back to its roots.
Whatever it has in store for us, the new movie comes our way just in time for Halloween 2017.
