A few weeks ago, director David Gordon Green revealed that he had originally intended to begin his recently released HALLOWEEN sequel with a complicated recreation of the ending of John Carpenter's 1978 original HALLOWEEN. A set was built to match the rooms that ending took place in, and body doubles, look-alikes, and maybe even digitally altered stock footage would have been used to bring the '78 versions of Laurie Strode and Dr. Loomis back to the screen. Part of the plan would have involved altering HALLOWEEN's classic final moments. Carpenter mentioned in an interview that Green intended to add in a moment where Loomis is murdered by slasher Michael Myers.
It was Carpenter who convinced Green not to film this sequence. As he put it,
I thought, ‘That’s a mistake. The audience won’t like that. That’s a revision I don’t think we should do.’ So that was my one big contribution… I thought the fans are gonna get pissed off at that. I don’t think you have to even deal with the ending of my movie; just start the movie where they did."
In an episode of the Shock Waves podcast, the new HALLOWEEN's co-producer Ryan Turek has shared details on exactly how the death of Loomis was going to play out.
ComicBook.com provides the transcript:
The first scripted opening was a re-envisioning of the finale of HALLOWEEN. David wanted to f-ck things up, man. He wanted to just mix things up a little bit. So, initially, he had a scene in which we came in at the end of HALLOWEEN, and Loomis sees the screaming kids, comes inside, sees the struggle between Laurie and Michael. Michael puts his mask back on, Loomis shoots him, pushes Michael back through the doorway into the bedroom. Laurie is cowering on the ground, Loomis charges into the bedroom, where Michael gets the upper hand and jumps him. Loomis drops the gun and then Laurie is holding onto the gun, but she’s shaking so much she can’t actually pull the trigger. And then Michael chokes out Loomis, kills him, and then Laurie decides to pull the trigger and knock Michael back. So, we had that, and then… we were trying to figure out how to pull that off… and it was just crazy, you know…"
I was already glad they didn't shoot that opening sequence even before I heard these details, but now that I know exactly how it was going to play out, I'm even happier that it was scrapped. It would be totally unnecessary to change what happened at the end of HALLOWEEN.
That's what Carpenter thought, too. Turek says,
I remember John read that draft and he was like, ‘Uhhh, why would you want to change that? Why would you want to change my ending?’ And David took that to heart."
It's a very good thing Carpenter was involved with this project. He saved the set-up and composed a cool score.
Written by Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley, the new HALLOWEEN brings Jamie Lee Curtis back in the role of
Laurie Strode, who 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 was joined in the cast by Judy Greer as Laurie's daughter Karen, Andi Matichak as Laurie's granddaughter Allyson, 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 around.