The release of director David Gordon Green's HALLOWEEN sequel is still three months away, but the marketing department is keeping the hype alive by having Entertainment Weekly release a new publicity shot of iconic slasher Michael Myers on the biggest day for horror that isn't Halloween – Friday the 13th. It seems kind of disrespectful to Jason Voorhees to be dropping a new image of Myers on his day, but here it is, shared below.
Scripted by Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley, the new HALLOWEEN only acknowledges the events of John Carpenter's original, 1978 classic, ignoring what happened in all of the sequels. Accompanying the new image was a quote from star Jamie Lee Curtis where she said,
What I loved is that it surgically excises all of that dead tissue. This is growing from just that original movie, 40 years later. There may be people who love the other movies, great — [they have] zero relevance to this story."
For his part, Green was a bit kinder to the irrelevant sequels, telling EW that
This film isn’t one to narratively recognize any of the films other than the original Halloween, but we very much enjoy the other films and there’s a lot of very subtle shout-outs to a number of things that I think the big fans — the people that know the films scientifically — will get a kick out of, hopefully."
Curtis reprises 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.
Joining her in the cast are Judy Greer as Laurie's daughter Karen; Andi Matichak as Karen's daughter Allyson; Miles Robbins, Virginia Gardner, Dylan Arnold, and Drew Scheid as Allyson's Haddonfield High classmates; Will Patton and Rob Niter as police officers; Rhian Rees as a character named Dana; and Diva Tyler as a caretaker. Original Michael Myers performer Nick Castle and stuntman James Jude Courtney both wore the mask of the iconic slasher this time around.
John Carpenter served as executive producer on this Blumhouse Production, which is scheduled to be released on October 19th. Carpenter is also composing the score for the film.