The horror genre is in a very good place right now. Rather than predictable sequels, new and exciting concepts have arrived in the past few years. And with Get Out winning an Oscar this past Awards Season, it seems like just about anything is possible for the classic genre. Blumhouse Studios has had a hand in many of the recent hits, and now the studio is turning its head on one of the classics: Halloween. Blumhouse's Halloween is arriving this October, and bringing back Jamie Lee Curtis for a new story that will be a direct sequel to the original 1978 classic. Given the new timeline, the word "reboot" has been tossed around for Halloween, but Jason Blum takes umbrage with this assessment. He recently explained why the new film is anything but a reboot, saying:
I think the way to get people interested in a reboot is not 'reboot.' The term makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck. What we're doing with Halloween is, I guess I'll use the term 'reinvention.' A reboot just sounds so corporate. The way that we attacked Halloween was to go after what we've done with a lot of other movies. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are not known for horror, Jordan Peele was not known for horror before he did Get Out, so I think we've had a lot of success kind mixing genres of people. Not the movie, the movie's a straight, scary movie.
Rather than thinking about starting the Halloween franchise over, it seems that everyone involved with Blumhouse's upcoming sequel is simply focusing on the story at hand. And rather than a corporate machine that is all out for the money, Halloween is going to be more of a passion project. A terrifying passion project.
Jason Blum's comments to Variety show how passionate everyone at Blumhouse seems to be about Halloween. As he said, the team is not necessarily made up of horror professionals. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are just Halloween superfans, who are ready to bring a new, modern story to Haddonfield, Illinois. It's this line of thinking that likely inspired them to ignore all of the Halloween sequels, therefore freeing up the narrative space without worrying about disrupting the canon.
Blumhouse' Halloween will pick up 40 years after the events of John Carpenter's original film. Jamie Lee Curtis' Laurie Strode has spent decades waiting for Michael Myers to break out of Smith Grove Sanitarium. But on the 40th anniversary of her attack, Michael manages to get out and rein terror back upon the formerly peaceful town. Laurie will have to arm up and protect herself, her daughter, and granddaughter in the process.
In his same conversation with Variety, Jason Blum teased the exciting new take on the movie, saying:
So I think we've got a very, very original voice with David Gordon Green and Danny. And having Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter back in the mix to me was the beginning, and now we're almost towards the end, we've almost finished the movie, and I'm super pleased with how the movie turned out, and I'm grateful that we brought new voices and the original voices together in a strategic way to make what I think is a terrific movie. And fans will have to tell me if they think so too, but I think they will be very happy.
Halloween will arrive in theaters October 19th, 2018. In the meantime, check out out 2018 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.
