The new Halloween, from director David Gordon Green (who also co-wrote the script with Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride), disregards every film in the horror franchise, except the 1978 original. Or as super-producer Jason Blum put it, “You can’t make Halloween without John Carpenter and Jamie Lee Curtis. If you did, you’d be starting out with two and a half strikes against you.” (How many strikes is Busta Rhymes doing kung fu against Michael Myers?) If 2018’s Halloween proves to be a success, which seems like a near-certainty based on early reviews, Blum would consider extending the reinvigorated series.
“Yeah, for sure, for sure, 100 percent,” Blum told EW about considering making sequels set in the Halloween universe. “Let me tell you, if we got six movies out of [Paranormal Activity] — they found new footage five times in a row! — I feel like we can figure out the next chapter. But we’ll see.” He continued, “I think the same creative muscle that you use to [sequelize] IP that already exists is exactly the same muscle that you exercise for sequels [of our own films]. So Purge 2, 3, 4; Insidious 2, 3, 4; Ouija 2; Paranormal 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 — anything that’s after 1 is the exact same thing. So we’ve done a lot of movies from existing IP, it just happens to be our own existing IP, so it felt very familiar. It felt like making one of our sequels, which is always the same conundrum, which is how do you make it feel original enough that people feel like it’s worth seeing, but not too original that it’s not connected to the previous chapters?”
(McBride already “has an idea” for a sequel, “so now we’re just sort of exploring them to see if they have enough legs to kind of warrant it,” he said.)
Blumhouse Productions knows what it’s doing. The production company has financed only two films with a budget exceeding $15 million — Tooth Fairy (truly Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s finest cinematic feat) and Birth of the Dragon — but 15 have grossed over $100 million, including Best Picture nominee Get Out. Expect Halloween, which comes out October 19, to join the ranks.
Where’s my Jem and the Holograms sequel, Blum???
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
