Although Halloween Kills is the 12th movie in the Halloween franchise, continuity-wise, it’s only working off the events of the 1978 original and the 2018 follow-up that saw Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode clashing with the horrifying Michael Myers 40 years after their first encounter. This weekend, Kills will pick up mere moments after the previous movie ended, but if you’re expecting the already-greenlit Halloween Ends to also take place immediately after its predecessor, director David Gordon Green has revealed this won’t be the case. Instead, there will be a “bit of a time jump.”
During his visit to the ReelBlend podcast, David Gordon Green laid out how Halloween Kills is meant to show a town in chaos caused by the arrival of the “boogeyman,” a.k.a. Michael Myers. But once this movie is over, the filmmaker said they’re going to “take a beat” to recoup ahead of Halloween Ends, hence the time jump rather than continuing on in the same evening. Green also said that Ends will bring the saga between Laurie and Michael to a “satisfying” close.
David Gordon Green didn’t elaborate on how long the time jump between Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends will be. Maybe it’ll be as short as just a few weeks or months, or maybe when Michael Myers resurfaces, a year or two will have passed. Either way, it sounds like it’ll have been enough time for the citizens of Haddonfield to recover from Kills’ chaotic events, only for this serial to come back with a vengeance in Ends. Given the plan for this new Halloween trilogy though, at least Ends will, as the title clearly lays out, mark Michael’s final rampage in this particular saga.
In July 2019, nine months after the prior Halloween movie was released, it was officially announced that two sequels would follow, with the original plan being for Halloween Kills to come out in October 2020 and Halloween Ends to follow in October 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic forced these plans to be scrapped, and now Ends is slated to come out on October 14, 2022. No specific plot details for Ends have been revealed yet other than that it will be more of a “contained” story so as not to feel repetitive.
Casting-wise, Halloween Ends will once again see Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode accompanied by Judy Greer’s Karen Nelson (Laurie’s daughter) and Andi Matichak as Allyson Nelson (Karen’s daughter), while James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle will share Michael Myers/The Shape performing duties once more. Whether any of the surviving supporting characters from Halloween Kills will participate in Ends remains to be seen. In addition to sitting in the director’s chair again, David Gordon Green also re-teamed with Danny McBride to write Ends, and they were joined by Chris Bernier and Paul Brad Logan.
While we wait for more updates about Halloween Ends’ development, Halloween Kills will hit theaters and Peacock on Friday, October 15, and our 2021 release schedule is available for those of you planning what other movies to see before the year is over.
