Halloween fans could have just had the best news from Blumhouse boss, Jason Blum. In 2018, the studio’s first Halloween movie under the direction of David Gordon Green was well received and promised much of the sequel trilogy to John Carpenter’s original 1978 movie starring Jamie Lee Curtis back in the role of Laurie Strode. However, the two sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, were hugely disappointing and ironically killed off Michael Myers as well as the franchise. But that is the last time Blumhouse will be part of the franchise, as Blum confirmed that he doesn’t have any ownership of the franchise now – although he did threaten to get involved again in future. Blum told Variety:
“We don’t own the rights anymore. I had a three-picture deal. But I would do another Halloween movie.”
Halloween was a huge box office hit in 2018, doing a similar feat to Carpenter’s original movie, making more than 20 times its budget. The $260 million box office haul gave everyone a sense that Green was about to deliver two more incredible movies with his planned sequels. That is not exactly how it played out.
Halloween Kills was released in 2021. While the film’s release was marred by the Covid pandemic, it still turned a $20 million budget (double that of its predecessor) into $133 million. Reviews, however, were not great, with critics giving the movie just 38% and audiences being split at 66%. Halloween Ends continued the downward spiral, ending with 40% and 57% scores from critics and audiences, respectively, and taking just $105 million on the back of a higher $33 million budget.
Was the Halloween trilogy a complete disaster? Not by a long way, but the final movie had so many issues that many fans just couldn’t ignore, and it is probably for the best that the Halloween franchise is now moving onto something new.
‘Halloween’ is Heading to the Small Screen
While the original premise of the Halloween franchise was as an anthology project, which is why Halloween III: Season of the Witch did not feature Michael Myers. However, with the first two movies being centered on the story of Laurie and Michael, no one wanted anything other than more of the unkillable force in the bad William Shatner mask.
In 2024, the entire Halloween franchise came home to Miramax, with the studio acquiring both TV and movie rights. This immediately set it as a “big priority” when it came to turning the horror saga into a TV show, and Miramax boss, Marc Helwig, explained that the new series would be ignoring Blumhouse’s trilogy and all other sequels. He said at the time:
“The foundation of it is the original film, the John Carpenter movie, the characters of that film, and perhaps a group of characters that we haven’t really focused on that much in recent film versions or even in a number of them. It’s a creative reset completely and going back to the original film, as opposed to spinning out of any of the more recent film adaptations.”
There has been little movement on the series since that statement, but it will probably not be too long before we hear something about how it is coming along. The one thing for certain is that Blumhouse’s time working on the franchise is over, and perhaps the next installment might be able to revitalize the story of Michael Myers all over again.
- Release Date
-
October 27, 1978
- Runtime
-
91 minutes
- Director
-
John Carpenter
- Writers
-
Debra Hill, John Carpenter
- Producers
-
Irwin Yablans
- Sequel(s)
-
Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, Halloween: Resurrection, Halloween, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, Halloween, Halloween Kills, Halloween Ends
