Halloween reboot to be produced by John Carpenter, Blumhouse and Miramax

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

Big news coming out of the Blumhouse Productions camp today. Our site, as well a handful of others, were exclusively informed just a few hours ago that a new HALLOWEEN film is on the way… and John Carpenter is executive producing! Not only that, he may score it as well!

Dimension had been attempting to get a new HALLOWEEN off the ground for years (won’t even link to all the articles we’ve written about HALLOWEEN 3D and the rest), but they lost the rights months ago, and now it’s Miramax, Trancas International Films and Blumhouse taking the reins. Of course, the involvement of Carpenter is even bigger news. In addition, franchise mainstay Malek Akkad will serve as producer.

Jason Blum and company have been working on this project for almost a year, but Carpenter only came aboard about two weeks ago. Blum made it clear that, as far as he’s concerned, there is no making this new HALLOWEEN without John Carpenter, who will “godfather” the new movie and be involved creatively. No director is attached, but Blumhouse is already in meetings with potential helmers.

And yes, they’re currently trying to convince Carpenter to score the film, but nothing is set in stone just yet. He does sound open to it though.

Said Carpenter about this new HALLOWEEN:

We’re going to go back to the earlier traditions that we started with. It’s kind of gone astray a little bit. I thought that maybe the remake went off somewhere that I didn’t want it to go. Michael Myers is not a character, he’s a force of nature. He is not a person; he is part supernatural, part human. When you start straying away from that and start explaining, you’re lost. So hopefully we can guide it back in that direction.”

In a press release, Carpenter added:

38 years after the original Halloween I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all.”

Carpenter also said it didn’t take much convincing to get him to climb aboard, a surprise when you recall how often Carpenter has shied away from being a part of reboots and sequels to his films. (The proposed ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK remake notwithstanding.) 

For his part, Blum said they don’t want to make this film too “meta” and over-explain things; like Carpenter, he’s looking to go back to the basics. The film’s budget will be in line with other Blumhouse productions, so figure under $15 million. The producer claimed they don’t have a timeline for production yet, but the goal is to have it ready by Halloween 2017. Makes sense.

Naturally, no details are forthcoming; we can’t tell if it’s a sequel, remake, reboot, premake, whatever. Despite Carpenter’s statement about a “10th sequel”, it still sounds as though the principals aren’t willing to reveal just what it is. But… it’s a new HALLOWEEN movie with John Carpenter involved. That’s something special.