McBride confirms new Halloween timeline; says movie is “straight horror”

There are tons of HALLOWEEN movies in the long-running franchise, including a remake and a sequel to that remake from Rob Zombie. But for the new HALLOWEEN movie from Danny McBride and David Gordon Green they’ll basically be ignoring every movie in the series other than the first one, creating a new timeline which has just been confirmed by McBride.

The actor spoke with Yahoo about the upcoming sequel, and McBride went on to confirm that the movie would pick up right where the first movie left off but will exist in "sort of an alternate reality" where things didn’t end as we remember them:

We’re kind of ignoring all the films past the first one. It picks up after the first one, but it’s sort of an alternate reality. It’s as if the first Halloween ended in a slightly different way.

This may seem like a bold move when it comes to making a sequel to what is considered one of the greatest horror films ever, and before they even begun to think about saying yes to the project they had to get confirmation from director John Carpenter. After he said yes, it was on to original star Jamie Lee Curtis:

I’m a humongous Halloween fan, so when David and I got approached about doing this from Blumhouse [the studio behind Get Out], the first thing David and I said was, ‘We’ll come up with a take, but we have to pitch it to [franchise creator John] Carpenter. If he’s not interested, we’re definitely not into making this.’ And [executive producer] Jason Blum was totally on board with that. That’s exactly what he wanted to do anyway. So we came up with our pitch. We pitched to Carpenter, and he was into it, which kind of blew David and me away, but I still think nobody was really talking about Jamie. … I think everyone was kind of on the mindset of it’d be a grab to get her, but no one really knew if we would be able to. So Dave and I just busted our ass on this script to really make that Laurie Strode character something she wouldn’t be able to say no to. When we finished the script, we sent it to her, and she said she was in. So we just flipped out. We were over the moon about her involvement.

McBride and Green are known for comedies (including their show, VICE PRINCIPALS), but McBride assures fans this will not be some sort of meta-horror comedy, and that he hopes it will keep viewers up at night for some time:

I think you should be very scared. I mean, this isn’t a comedy at all. I think there was, like, maybe one joke on the page, but the rest is straight horror. So hopefully it gets in people’s heads and keeps them up late at night.

Taking this direction is probably the best way to go about doing a new HALLOWEEN movie. This way it doesn't become just another remake and they don't have to adhere to tons of subpar horror sequels. Fans may have entries that they like but trying to stick to years of mythology is far too complicated. The new movie will carve out its own place (literally), and also pay respect to the first movie. If they do this right, maybe they can earn a crack at a new NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. How bad was that remake, amiright?

The next HALLOWEEN is set for October 2018