'Halloween Kills' Begins Shooting This Fall, Director Teases End of Michael Myers Saga
Halloween Kills Begins Shooting This Fall, Director Teases End of Michael Myers Saga
David Gordon Green and Danny McBride discuss the recently announced sequels Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.
It was recently announced that Blumhouse is going to shoot two sequels to last year's Halloween in the form of Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. Director David Gordon Green is returning, as is Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, with franchise creator John Carpenter also back on board. The idea is to end this decades-long journey between Laurie and Michael. Now, Green and his writing partner Danny McBride have opened up a bit about the forthcoming sequels. For starters, Green revealed in a recent interview that they're going to start shooting this fall.
"We start in September [and shoot them back-to-back] with a breather between. But they'll be out in two consecutive years, in 2020 and 2021. You get a breather this year, and then, for the next two years, it's gonna be crazy."
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This came during the TCA's, which David Gordon Green and Danny McBride were at to promote their upcoming HBO series Righteous Gemstones. The two initially had plans to shoot 2018's Halloween with a sequel back-to-back. However, they decided it was best to wait and see how the first one did before jumping the gun. Green reveals that their "big ideas" were expanded and revamped for these two upcoming sequels.
"We had ambitions of doing two, with some big ideas, and then decided that we should see if anybody liked one at a time, and if they liked the other one, then maybe we'd build on it. And then, when [Halloween] was successful, our additional ideas that weren't integrated into that first one developed into two. We've written them, and we're ready to go... It's just a continuation of it. It's telling the story, moving forward. It's not another reinvention, or anything like that. It's this world that we've established, and then it continues beyond the events of the first one."
Halloween served as a direct sequel to John Carpenter's original. Over the years, many sequels were produced, and ultimately ignored, to set up this new story. Halloween Ends is clearly setting up a conclusion to that story. As for whether or not it will be the final entry in the Michael Myers saga? Danny McBride had this to say.
"I think, ultimately, Michael Myers is such an iconic character that no one besides Carpenter is ever gonna have ownership over him. This will be our chance at the table to play with these characters, and I'm sure that, when we're done, other people will come in and do the same thing, or have their own reinvention. Michael Myers is iconic enough to allow that, too. He's like James Bond, where you can have different actors and different filmmakers. He represents something so simple and scary that he can be translated by lots of different people."
Indeed, horror icons such as Michael Myers can't be expected to stay dead. Yes, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends will conclude this story, but McBride and Green aren't going to over-promise by assuming nobody else will ever come along with a new take. Green had this to add.
"They're never done telling the Frankenstein story, and at this point, Michael Myers is a classic movie monster. But our Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode/Michael Myers saga will be done. The fun of it is also seeing it end and knowing that it can. If you just keep trying to elongate it and milk it for all of the money, then that's boring."
Halloween was a huge success, bringing in $255 million worldwide, while also garnering generally favorable reviews. Halloween Kills is set to arrive in theaters on October 16, 2020. That will be followed by Halloween Ends a year later on October 15, 2021. This news was previously reported by Collider.
Topics: Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends, Halloween
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