The Halloween franchise has perhaps the most convoluted history of any slasher movie series. Even if you disregard the 2007 reboot and its sequel, the first eight films still have such a warped continuity that it’s hard to get your head around it all – with various deaths and resurrections for Jamie Lee Curtis’ heroine Laurie Strode and, of course, her infamous stalker, Michael Myers.
2018’s upcoming reinvention of the franchise was always expected to ignore the majority of what had come before, then. It was assumed that, like 1998’s Halloween: H20, it would only use the 1978 original and Halloween II as its springboard. It turns out, however, that the 40th anniversary movie will cut out even more than we thought.
A few weeks back, John Carpenter, who’s on board to produce and score the new pic, revealed that it’ll completely ignore each and every sequel and now, he’s confirmed that once again. In a recent interview, the writer/director spoke a bit about the project and said that it’s going to pretend that the many sequels never even happened. Unfortunately, he refused to give away anything more than that, but if you’re up on your Halloween history, then you’ll know that this will totally change the franchise.
Halloween II is perhaps the most notable of the sequels, as it’s the first film to confirm that Laurie is Michael Myers’ secret sister. This went on to become the bedrock of the series’ mythology, but it seems that 2018’s Halloween will chuck all of that out the window and instead go back to the blank canvas that was set up in the 1978 version – which may actually be the best move here.
Halloween is set to slash its way into theatres on October 19th, 2018 – a release date which producer Jason Blum swears by. It’ll star Jamie Lee Curtis, who’s returning to reprise her role as Laurie, along with Judy Greer as her daughter, Karen. Further casting has yet to be announced, but as always, watch this space for more.