Blumhouse Productions is a behemoth in the horror world, as the studio is behind some of the most successful modern classics like Get Out, Split, and Insidious. Blumhouse brought the Halloween franchise back to theaters in 2018 with David Gordon Green's first movie, which served as a direct follow up to John Carpenter's 1978 original. Two more movies are coming to form a trilogy, but Jason Blum originally had some concern about this year's upcoming movie Halloween Kills.
2018's Halloween was a record breaking success, and showed how much interest is in the property-- especially with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as protagonist Laurie Strode. Two more sequels were quickly green lit, but Jason Blum was worried that Halloween Kills would be too much set up and not a complete movie, referencing The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers to hammer his point down. As he put it,
I worried about it until I saw [the second one]. And David [Gordon Green, director] worried about it. That it would feel like, remember Lord of the Rings? Like you weren’t getting [the full story]? It doesn’t feel like that at all.
Sticking the landing on a trilogy is no easy task, and plenty of franchises have struggled with this before. Jason Blum wanted to make sure Halloween Kills told its own story, rather than simply doing set up for the third installment Halloween Ends. Luckily it seems that the next movie will be doing just that this coming October.
It's kind of funny to hear Jason Blum take aim at The Two Towers, considering just how massively successful the Lord of the Rings trilogy was in theaters. Although while it introduced, revived Gandalf, and included some epic battle sequences, the second movie didn't actually drastically change the circumstances of the story. The Fellowship was largely in the same position they were at the end of the first movie, in the same groups.
Halloween Ends will likely be an epic story, as we reach the final conclusion to Laurie Strode's eternal conflict with Michael Myers. But Jason Blum wanted to ensure Halloween Kills would tell its own capsulated story, rather than simply being tied to the other two movies. Later in his conversation with io9, Blum went on to explain his feelings about the franchise and The Two Towers, saying:
[Halloween Kills] feels like a complete movie. There’s a first, second, and third act. It has a big end. You still know from the end of the second movie where the third movie is going, but the second movie ends in a totally satisfying way. So it doesn’t feel like, you know, that Lord of the Rings issue that they had.
It looks like hardcore fans of the Halloween franchise are going to be very happy with Halloween Kills. Namely, because it tells its own satisfying story. Jason Blum recently teased the larger scale of the upcoming sequel, with the cast including plenty of returning characters from John Carpenter's 1978 original. The survivors of Michael's first rampage through Haddonfield are being assembled, and I doubt they're all gonna make it out alive.
Halloween Kills is set to arrive in theaters on October 16th. In the meantime, check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.
