Following in the footsteps on John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN seemed like a fool's errand; few of the sequels have come anywhere near approaching the brilliance of the 1978 original, but in 2018, David Gordon Green and Danny McBride gave it a shot. The belated sequel ignored the entire franchise with the exception of the first film, taking place forty years after the events of that fateful Halloween night. Against all odds, the film was actually pretty damn good, not to mention profitable, which lead to the announcement of two sequels – HALLOWEEN KILLS and HALLOWEEN ENDS.
Production on HALLOWEEN KILLS was completed late last year, and co-writer Scott Teems teased to MovieWeb that fans who enjoyed the first one will definitely be pleased by its bigger, badder, meaner offspring.
I really can't say anything about it, but I am really excited about it. I saw a rough cut of it a few weeks ago, and I'm a little biased, but my gut says that people that like the last one will be very excited about this one. It's like the first one on steroids, I guess. It really is the bigger, badder, meaner version of the first one.
I'll take it. When the two sequels were announced, some feared that the two films would feel like one movie cut down the middle, but Blumhouse Productions' Jason Blum has previously assured fans that that's not the case. "I worried about it until I saw [the second one]," Blum said. "And David [Gordon Green, director] worried about it. That it would feel like, remember Lord of the Rings? Like you weren’t getting [the full story]? It doesn’t feel like that at all. [Halloween Kills] feels like a complete movie. There’s a first, second, and third act. It has a big end. You still know from the end of the second movie where the third movie is going, but the second movie ends in a totally satisfying way."
Jamie Lee Curtis has also teased that HALLOWEEN KILLS and HALLOWEEN ENDS will be digging deep into the trauma of the original John Carpenter film.
What I love that David and Danny and company did is they connected the dots for forty years, now they’re going back to really unpack the first movie, bringing back all those characters whose lives were affected by what happened in 1978… And then the last movie is the sort of cultural phenomenon of violence, that’s what the third movie ultimately is, a very powerful examination of violence.
HALLOWEEN KILLS is set for a October 16, 2020 release with HALLOWEEN ENDS hitting theaters on October 15, 2021.