We've been covering Blumhouse's new HALLOWEEN sequel pretty heavily for a while now, and with good reason, as the film marked the return of both the original Michael Myers and the franchise's original heroine Jamie Lee Curtis / Laurie Strode. There was some intense interest in the project, judging by the fact that it has been out for less than a week and has already made over $100 million at the global box office. The movie was shot on a budget around $15 million, so with a return on investment like that it's clear that there's going to be a sequel soon.
We know director David Gordon Green and his co-writers Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley have ideas in mind for a sequel; back in June, McBride said,
We were going to shoot two of them back-to-back. Then we were like, Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This could come out, and everyone could hate us, and we’d never work again. So, let’s not have to sit around for a year while we wait for another movie to come out that we know people aren’t going to like. So, we were like, Let’s learn from this, and see what works, and what doesn’t. But we definitely have an idea of where we would go [with] this branch of the story and hopefully we get a chance to do it."
Speaking with Deadline after the film's massive opening weekend, McBride confirmed that the writing team has been asked to flesh out those ideas:
We definitely have ideas of what we would do. I think we did not allow ourselves to really indulge those ideas until the movie came out. We just wanted to put all our hopes and dreams in having this film stick the landing. But we do have thoughts and ideas of what we could possibly do. We hadn’t invested a ton of time on them, but now we’re being asked to figure it out. There are definitely talks on whether we will do more of them and we’re just trying to see what best makes sense."
It will be interesting to see whether or not Green, McBride, and Fradley do end up being involved with the next HALLOWEEN, and exactly what kind of story the next film will be telling. Curtis came back for the new movie, but will she come back for another sequel? Would a sequel focus on Michael Myers going after Laurie's granddaughter Allyson (played by Andi Matichak)? The new HALLOWEEN ignores every other film in the series except the 1978 original, removing the original HALLOWEEN II's twist that Michael and Laurie are siblings and he's on a mission to wipe out his family. Green and his collaborators worked to return Michael to what he was in the first movie, an evil force that kills at random. If he's focused on stalking the same characters in the next movie, even if they aren't related to him, does that negate the work that was done to make him a random killer again? And if Laurie and her family don't return, will viewers be disappointed? There's no obvious, easy way forward from here.
In the new HALLOWEEN,
Laurie Strode comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, the masked figure who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.
Curtis and Matichak's co-stars include Judy Greer as Laurie's daughter Karen, Will Patton as Frank Hawkins, Virginia Gardner as Allyson's friend Vicky, Miles Robbins as Vicky's boyfriend Dave, Dylan Arnold as Cameron Elam, Drew Scheid as Oscar, Toby Huss as Ray, Jefferson Hall as Aaron Korey, Rhian Rees as Dana Haines, Omar J. Dorsey as Sheriff Barker, Rob Niter as Deputy Sheriff Walker, Jibrail Nantambu as Julian, Haluk Bilginer as Dr. Ranbir Sartain, Nick McKeever as Deputy Keeve, and Diva Tyler as a caretaker. Original Michael Myers performer Nick Castle and stuntman James Jude Courtney both wore the mask of the boogeyman this time.