John Carpenter’s Tales for a Halloween Night SyFy series officially dead

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

In the fall of 2017, SyFy announced that they were developing a TV series based on John Carpenter's comic book series TALES FOR A HALLOWEEN NIGHT. It was somewhat promised that Carpenter would even direct a few episodes of the series. But now it looks like it's not going to be happening.

President of Storm King Productions Sandy King says:

SYFY wanted Tales for a Halloween Night but it quickly became evident that they just wanted the title. And I really saw a disaster on the horizon. So I went, 'No, no, no. This is not a good idea.' It was a greenlit series but if it's not gonna be something cool for the fans and for the eventual audience, then I don't think it's a good idea to do it.

King then confirmed the death of the series by coming right out and saying: 

It's dead.

King explained:

I think we have a pretty good idea what our fans want to see and we definitely have a pretty good idea what should come out from. If somebody's a fan of that anthology, there should be a character to any show that comes out of it…it shouldn't be just barfing up the books. It should be something that grows out of it or has a flavor of it or in some way meets the expectations or why are we giving it that title? Call it 'Bozo Goes To Mars' or something else.

All of that said, King isn't ruling out the possibility of a TV series at some point:

It's all cool. We can do another series but I think if you use that title, you should in some way meet those expectations. So we'll see. It doesn't mean something can't be done but at its core, the people we work with have to respect horror fans and respect the genre. That's the core of it. Not just respect the fact that horror right now makes money. And that's something you really have to be willing to walk away from. When you look at it and go, 'Nah, no, it's not good enough.' There are times you just have to sit there and go, 'Seriously, why did you think that was a good idea?' And if you're me, you have to be prepared for everybody to be pissed off about it.

SyFy & John Carpenter's TALES FOR A HALLOWEEN NIGHT rundown:

Based on Carpenter’s award-winning graphic novel anthology of stories where he brings together storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for a collection of horror stories featuring graveyards, sunken ships, creepy crawlers and ghosts that will haunt your dreams long after you’ve finished reading. 

SyFy's adaptation of TALES FOR A HALLOWEEN NIGHT was all part of Carpenter signing a deal with Universal Cable Productions (UCP) which is said to see Carpenter executive produce scripted programming for networks and streaming services! This project was one of the first ones set up. What about the rest? Is this deal still in place? I guess we'll find out one of these days… Until then what do you think of all this? Let us know below!