Nick Castle says the new Halloween film will feel a lot like the original

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

When John Carpenter's original HALLOWEEN was released all the way back in 1978, it spawned a great deal of imitators, but few managed to successfully capture the magic of Carpenter's movie, including the franchise's own sequels. With a new HALLOWEEN film on the horizon from the creative team of David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, there's hope that the original will finally have a worthy successor. In addition to bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis, the new HALLOWEEN will feature original Michael Myers actor Nick Castle as well, who will be playing The Shape for the first time since the original movie.

Nick Castle recently spoke with Halloween Daily News while at Mad Monster Party, and he dropped a few tidbits about the new HALLOWEEN film, including that it will feel a lot like the original.

Yes. And it’s very neighborhood-centric, you know, like the first one. It feels a lot like (the first film). There are a lot of things coinciding (in the new film) that feel like clever ways to introduce a kind of déjà vu of the first one, without feeling like it’s being copied. The script had some very clever people working on it. 

Nick Castle added that Danny McBride and David Gordon Green were very clear on "wanting to find the tone that was in the first one. It was the first thing out of their mouths really: 'We want to do it like John did it.'" However, that's not to say that the film will simply be a rehash of the first film, as Castle claims that some "really bold choices" have gone into fleshing out the the relationships in Laurie Strode's family. "What I like about this (new film) is they’ve got some really good young actors. They fleshed out their roles," Castle said. "They fleshed out the relationship of Jamie’s character with her daughter and her granddaughter, so you’ve got that whole generational thing going. And they made some choices that I think are really bold choices about who these people are and why they are the way they are now. So I’m really looking forward it. I have high hopes. Like I said in the panel, you never know until you put it all together and put it out there and have a few people look at it."

I'm not necessarily looking for the new HALLOWEEN to be the CITIZEN KANE of horror movies, but I'm hoping that it will at least be more than just another belated horror sequel. I want to be scared by Michael Myers again. The new film will find The Shape going up against three generations of the Strode family. In addition to Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie Strode, HALLOWEEN will also star Judy Greer as Laurie's daughter, Karen, and Andi Matichak as Allyson, Karen's daughter and Laurie's granddaughter.

HALLOWEEN will hit theaters on October 19, 2018.