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Jeff Fradley

Halloween – Heritage Trailer

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In twenty-seven days, evil returns to Haddonfield in director David Gordon Green’s Halloween, and in anticipation of the buzzed-about feature film, Universal Pictures has released a new teaser trailer with an interesting angle.

Taking a true crime approach in the framing of The Shape’s terrifying backstory, it additionally sets up the new film’s central confrontation between Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis, returning to her iconic role) and nemesis Michael Myers (Nick Castle).

See the trailer below.

The eleventh film in the franchise, co-written by director David Gordon Green and collaborators Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, the latest Halloween film serves as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers. They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter.

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.

 

 

Halloween Has Premiered in Texas at Fantastic Fest and here’s what the Critics are Saying

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Ahead of its October release via Universal Pictures, director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s Halloween held its Texas premiere to a packed house this past Thursday, September 20th at Fantastic Fest in Austin (which runs through September 27th), and the critical response continues to be overwhelmingly positive.

Photo credit: Austin 360 (l to r: Jason Blum, Bill Block, Andi Matichak, Jamie Lee Curtis, Malek Akkad, Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride)

Says ComingSoon.net’s Alan Cerny, “Green and McBride are not reinventing Carpenter’s wheel.  Instead, they’re adding some torque and drive to it, and the result is one of the best horror sequels in many years,” while Richard Whittaker of the Austin Chronicle proclaims, “When David Gordon Green announced he was taking on the Halloween franchise, there was general befuddlement. But seeing what he has achieved with a sequel that is both loving and insightful, it makes all the sense in the world.”

That’s not all. Joe Gross of Austin 360 states, “This is Curtis’ show; her third-act confrontation with the man who destroyed Strode’s life plays out with tension and chills,” and Bad Feeling Magazine’s Gabriel Sigler effuses, “Green nails the film’s tone down perfectly, capturing Michael Myers in a way we haven’t seen since John Carpenter’s original.”

Halloween next plays on October 6th at Beyond Fest in Hollywood, CA at the Egyptian Theater as part of ‘Halloween Day’ (along with 1974’s Black Christmas and 1978’s Halloween, with Halloween series producer Malek Akkad in person, and more) before opening wide in theaters on October 19th, 2018.

The eleventh film in the franchise and co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s ‘78 film, and thusly disregards all of the series subsequent entries. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Check out the trailer below.

LA Press Junket: Jamie Lee Curtis Talks 2018’s Halloween

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This past Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with film star Jamie Lee Curtis on the Universal backlot to discuss her forthcoming movie Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this October. Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green and directed by the latter, Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Seated outdoors at a picnic table on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, which was decked out for the occasion in Halloween décor, Lee said of the film, which ignores all existing sequels subsequent to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film and which pits Curtis’ character of Laurie Strode up against original nemesis Michael Myers, albeit in a fresh way, “It’s a movie about trauma. There’s no question. Generational trauma. But you know, it can’t be (too) heavy. It’s a horror movie. It’s a Halloween movie, so it can’t be laden with psycho drama. Do you know what I mean? It has to be judicious.”

The generational trauma Curtis referred to is the PTSD her character now suffers after having survived the (now random, as they aren’t related in the new narrative) October 31, 1978 attack by escaped mental patient Myers, as set forth in Carpenter’s original. And as with any tragedy, the ensuing trauma has impacted everyone in its path. In Green’s Halloween that includes Laurie’s daughter Karen (portrayed by actress Judy Greer) and granddaughter Allyson (newcomer Andi Matichak).

Expounding on the familial damage the attack would inflict, as well as the personal, Curtis recalled of the shoot, and of her head space during, “The entire movie I was very isolated. I’m a homebody. I’m a mom. I’m a card carrying friend. Do you know what I mean? I buy a lot of birthday presents. I’m that girl. And I left (my home) and went to South Carolina to make this movie and I was very isolated. And from the moment I began the movie, Laurie’s trauma just all came back. The first time I walked on set it was very emotional. And it was that way all of the way through.”

Curtis continued of ‘finding’ Laurie four decades later, pointedly in a moment which serves to communicate the enormity of her trauma, “It was the last scene (of the film) that we shot, and as written in the script, Laurie sits in the truck, her truck, and there’s a gun and there’s alcohol and basically forty years of trauma comes back. Now, what do you do? So I prepared, and we were shooting it in the middle of nowhere in Charleston on a street called Ashley Phosphate Road in that truck and in a parking lot at night, with a bunch of lights and a bunch of people.”

“You need to know in advance that when I make a movie I like crews to wear name tags for the first few days of the production,” expounded the actress, “Because I like to know who you are. So on this last day, as I walked to Laurie’s little truck under this bank of lights and cranes (ready to shoot the scene), I realized that the entire crew were (instead) wearing names tags which read, ‘We Are Laurie Strode.’ The entire crew was saying, ‘We are with you. We are all in this together, and we believe in you.’ Needless to say, it was an incredibly emotional gift for them to give me, and something that for me was sort of the underpinning of the whole thing. It was beautiful.”

As Green’s Halloween cuts a new path in the franchise, talk then turned to the complicated narrative of the Halloween series, from the introduction of Jamie Lloyd as the daughter of a deceased Laurie in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in 1988, to the re-introduction of Laurie (and that of a new timeline) in 1998’s Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later, the latter of which was intended as the final showdown between Laurie and Michael.

“H20 was my simplistic idea of, ‘Hey! We’re all still in show business and the movie’s twenty years old. How often does that happen? Let’s make a twentieth anniversary movie and deal with the trauma,’” offered Curtis of the Steve Miner-directed film.

“(In that film) she was running (and had) changed her identity,” she continued. “She was an alcoholic and a drug addict, and we tried to explore it a little bit in that movie, but she wasn’t Laurie Strode. She’d already given up her identity. And it just didn’t work. I mean it was good. There were great things in it. It just wasn’t great.”

“What was beautiful about what David, Danny and Jeff did is,” Curtis mused of the writers’ decision (which was to ignore, barring the first film, its predecessors), “is that if you imagine all the Halloween movies as their own inner tubes on a lake, all they did was untie them from the dock. And they floated away. And they all exist. There’s Halloween II, there’s Halloween 4, but the only one that this movie relates to is the first one. Because in order to tell this story, that was the way they could. If they had to take all of those stories and try to weave them together, it wouldn’t have been possible, because Laurie died (in Halloween: Resurrection)! So I think the way that they did it was beautiful, and all of those movies still exist. None of them have been popped and or drowned. Do you know what I mean? They’re right there. But this is the story we’re telling today.”

And in this story, the character of Laurie’s granddaughter Allyson factors significantly. Portrayed by newcomer Andi Matichak, Curtis effused of the young actress (who bears a striking resemblance to the nineteen year old version of the grande dame of scream queens in not only physicality but in demeanor), “Andi (apparently) was going to go to college on a soccer scholarship, and that summer, before college, she went to model in Greece and met an actor’s manager there, who said, ‘You could be an actress.’ And she gave up college and moved to New York to become an actor at nineteen.”

Curtis continued of the shared similarities in their respective career trajectories, “When I was nineteen I was going to college, and I ran into an actor’s manager who said, ‘You could be an actress,’ and I went up for a part and ended up quitting college and becoming an actor. (1978’s) Halloween was my first movie. (2018’s) Halloween is her first movie. Neither of us were going to be actors, and we both ended up being actors, and in a Halloween film for our first movie.”

She concluded of Matichak, “She’s gorgeous, she’s grounded, and she’s gonna’ be a big star.”

David Gordon Green’s Halloween arrives to theaters October 19th, 2018 from Universal Pictures.

Check out the trailer below.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

LA Press Junket: Director David Gordon Green Talks Halloween

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This past Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with director David Gordon Green on the Universal backlot to discuss his forthcoming film Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19th, 2018.

Co-written by Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, this eleventh entry in the franchise is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer.

Seated outdoors on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, decked out for the occasion in Halloween décor, Green said of his initial attraction to directing the film, which serves as recalibration of the franchise, “I didn’t want to see someone else’s (version, because) I’ve been a huge fan of the (Halloween) movies. All of them, actually. But particularly the original film, which got under my skin in a way that no other horror film – well, maybe The Silence of the Lambs – has. Those two movies really affected me. I saw them in my youth and at a time in my life where they were very exciting and terrifying.”

Talk turned to Green’s script for Halloween, which co-written by he, McBride and Fradley, ignores all existing sequels, and picks up forty years after Carpenter’s original, with antagonist boogeyman Myers behind bars and final girl Laurie waiting with bated breath for his eventual return.

“As the franchise progressed it got more and more complicated, (and) my concept and Danny’s (was to) simplify it again,” said Green of their bold approach, “and go back to the least complicated version. And so, I wanted to do that rather than having to incorporate all of the mythology the series (had) absorbed over the years.”

And he laughed, “(To) use it as a device to be able to meet John Carpenter.”

As for the return of Curtis to her iconic role of Laurie Strode, there was however no guarantee during the initial scripting process.

“We had written it already, hoping she would (return),” recalled Green, “but were prepared for her to say, ‘No.’ (But) I just wanted to hang out with her. And she’s Laurie Strode. When you think about someone else stepping into that character? There’s no one like her. It’s iconic, so I put on my sweet talkin’ salesman voice and gave it the hard sell, and she said, ‘Yes.’”

“This was (us) assuming she wouldn’t want to be very involved,” revealed the filmmaker, “(but) as I started talking to her I realized (that) she was actually very excited about it. But originally we thought, ‘Let’s just try to get her for a couple of days and see if she’ll just do a cameo in the movie.’ Our initial thought was the trauma (of the first film) having been inherited by her daughter Karen (actress Judy Greer) who has inherited this sense of trauma and identity crisis from her mother who has raised her in this kind of captive, strange, over-protective landscape, and make that the centerpiece.”

“Before we presented her with the script,” he continued, “we did a quick sleight of hand, and moved all the meat to her, and said, ‘Let’s put it all on the table and see if we can make it happen.’ But we were prepared to have to pull it back, and play with other characters and other dimensions, and take the foreground with other characters.  I’m just glad we didn’t have to do it. It seems silly to even think about it now.”

Another one of the things which changed from concept to execution was Green’s desire to re-shoot the ending of Carpenter’s original from a different perspective, a plan which existed well into production.

“It was a very complicated overhead view of Loomis shooting the gun,” illuminated Green, “and then Michael going over (the balcony). And then when we were shooting (the film), we kept pushing it off.”

“So this is interesting,” Green expounded. “We rebuilt the bedroom from the climax of the original film, so we had the bones of this room, but the budget was getting tighter, and the schedules were getting tighter and we were trying to jam this (into the) movie and finish it up, and then we were like, ‘Screw it, let’s not do that.’ And if we need it later, we can always rebuild it, so we used the set for the scene (in our film) with all the mannequins. But it is (still) a rebuild of the bedroom (from the first Halloween) down to a square inch.”

In addition to set construction, in preparation for the aborted re-imagining of the finale of Carpenter’s original, the production had also hired actors to reprise needed characters from the first film.

“We cast a Loomis double, who was actually our art director, because he looked exactly like him,” said Green of the role originated by deceased actor Donald Pleasence, “and we would have re-created Laurie with a blend of Jamie and a body double similar to a nineteen-year old Jamie. And there was conversation of utilizing footage from the original film and digitally altering it, so we could get some other interesting elements, but all of it starts costing money, and you look at what you’re trying to do (and ask), ‘Do you need the gimmick? Do you need the exposition? Do you need the set up?’”

“Carpenter actually calmed me down on set and said to me, ‘Just trust (the audience) and let them figure it out.’”

As for Carpenter’s presence on the South Carolina set, “(It was) super surreal,” Green recalled of the famous director’s arrival. “My parents were also visiting and he and my dad were just talking about comic books while I was shooting the babysitter scene upstairs. It was the scene with Vicky (Virginia Gardner), with a ghost sheet over her, so it was kind of a fun scene for John to show up on set for. But yeah, really surreal seeing Jamie Lee and Nick Castle and John kind of bonding again. Someone was showing me photographs of that day recently, and it was pretty overwhelming and emotional and nostalgic and sentimental in a lot of ways.”

Conversation progressed to the film’s score, as composed and performed by Carpenter as he did for the original, and Green offered, “He kept me out of (the scoring process and) said, ‘I wanna’ have a whole score for you. It’s not gonna’ be piece by piece. I was like, ‘Is he doing an orchestra? Is it gonna’ be the opera?’ But then I heard it and it feels very Carpenter. I can sense a little Escape from New York in a couple little pieces. I was so fucking excited to hear (it).”

Reflecting on his career, “One of the things I’m most proud of (is that) I genre hop,” said the filmmaker, whose previous features include the decidedly non-horror films George Washington (2000) and Pineapple Express (2006), along with the comedic television series Eastbound & Down.

“I can’t sit still. I gotta’ do a comedy here, a fantasy movie there, (and) a drama there. What I’m most excited about that Halloween does, (is that) it lets me exercise all of it: humor, drama, emotional honesty and action. I felt more so than any other movie (that I’ve directed) that I could jam more genres that I love into one film. And call it a horror movie. So, that’s really rewarding, particularly if an audience likes it, because I don’t have a huge relationship with an audience responding well to my films,” Green laughed self-deprecatingly.

(Writer’s note: given the positive critical reviews stemming from Halloween’s world premiere at TIFF earlier this month, perhaps for Green this relationship will change).

Concluded the forty-three year old director, as behind him Carpenter and Curtis chatted against the backdrop of ghostly Halloween decorations which shifted in the failing light, “You know, critics have been kind and I’ve managed an awesome, exciting career and have traveled the world but out of thirteen movies (only) one of them is commercially successful. I don’t have a great track record. So it would be awesome to be able to think that I can infuse so much of what I’ve learned through the various movies, TV shows and commercials that I’ve done into one thing, and have an audience respond to it, because the sky’s the limit with what we want to continue (to do) with this franchise. So a lot of this movie, for me, is about trust: getting an audience to trust me, and getting me to trust a franchise, and then let’s see what needs to happen next, if it works.”

Check out the trailer below.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

 

Exclusive Photos & Interview: Director David Gordon Green & Co-writer Danny McBride Talk Halloween from the Set

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On February 1st of this year, HalloweenMovies sat down with writer and director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride (two creatives and ex-college buddies whose past work lays primarily outside of the horror genre) on the set of Halloween in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to discuss their approach (along with co-writer Jeff Fradley) in bringing not only Michael Myers back to the screen, but in delivering a Halloween film which posseses direct ties in narrative and style to Carpenter’s 1978 classic.

Jamie Lee Curtis & David Gordon Green

“All of the films from the seventies: it’s truly a decade that I geek out about,” effused forty-three year old Green, whose most known for helming the comedic drama series “Eastbound & Down” starring Halloween co-writer McBride. “Suspiria and Halloween were the two films that really hit me in my youth. I always look at my age between eleven and seventeen, when I was just absorbing things and digging through things. Music to me was The Doors and movies to me were horror films like Suspiria, Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It was a time where I was so effected by the things I was seeing, and I’ve really retained them, even when I was in my twenties and even in film school, those early teen years meant so much to me.”

Meant so much that at one point, prior to director Luca Guadagnino’s helming of the upcoming 2018 remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria, that Green was enthusiastically attached to write and direct his own retelling of the giallo horror classic, of which he’d intended to be a faithful adaptation, complete with portions of the original score by Goblin which he’d prememptively licensed.

“Creatively, Suspiria was a big one,” Green said, “and that was very exciting. I actually I wrote it with our (Halloween) production sound mixer Chris Hubert, but our version was very expensive and never ended up getting made. But Luca has now taken it on and has made a nice name for himself as a director. I wrote him the other day and asked him when I get to see it, because I need a peek.”

The eleventh film in the long-running franchise, 2018’s Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s seminal film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers. They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter.

As for the trio’s scripted approach to the latest Halloween film, the first installment in nine years and the second time in the franchise, not counting Rob Zombie’s films, in which the narrative discounts the existence of previous sequels, McBride stated, “I think it’s kind of cool to see what different filmmakers will do with a property that is so well known. I would rather have that approach to Michael Myers than everyone just continuing some storyline and just trying to regurgitate these things. I think it’s more interesting to have someone like David or Rob Zombie to just come and put their own stamp on it, for better or for worse. I think that’s a more interesting way for a franchise to stay alive than to just continue to beat the same drum over and over again.”

With Marvel having successfully done the same quite recently with the Spider-Man franchise, and fans of it happy to accept the various director’s unique interpretations of that universe, will Halloween aficionados do the same? Green’s hopeful.

“We have so much respect for the entire franchise, and that went into what we’re trying to engineer; literally a love of horror movies and a love of every Halloween movie across the board,” said the director. “We were trying to come up with what our take would be and really just found an original path that more or less takes the first one as our reality, (and) how we meet our characters in a different phase of their life under the reality of this traumatic event, and (how they) have to come to terms with some of these issues. Horrifically, in many circumstances, and that’s kind of the fun of how we launch off. There’s a lot of things that we haven’t revealed. Obviously a lot of the fun is (in) those reveals, and seeing how these things unfold, how these characters interact with one another and who they have become, and hopefully to honor the franchise in what we’ve painted in our very unique portrait.”

Does this portrait address the fate of Dr. Loomis?

“It does, yes,” succinctly allowed Green.

Given the trio’s similar background in lighter fare (the previously mentioned series “Eastbound & Down,” McBride’s well known turns in the feature films Tropic Thunder and Pineapple Express, and Fradley with the series “Vice Principals”), the conversation turned towards the similarity of scripted timing in both comedy and horror.

“We have talked about that a lot,” said McBride, “(and) that transition wasn’t that hard to make because I think with comedy you have to be very aware of where the audience is so you can decide what’s going to work next for them and what’s not going to work for them. I think when it came to pacing scares or even just the suspense or tension of a sequence, I think it’s very much engineered the same way. (You have to) have your finger on the pulse of exactly where you’re expecting the audience to be, so you can play with their expectations of where they think it is going to go next.”

With the latest Halloween revolving around three generations of Strode women (matriarch Laurie, daughter Karen and with focus high-school granddaughter Allyson), McBride offered, “I think that came up organically the very first time David and I talked. With the first Halloween, no one had been in a situation with Michael Myers before, so there’s this innocence, so I think by having multiple generations, we were able to cast a teenager who can give us that. (She’s) never seen violence like this so she has been able to have a normal life (and) have friends and not be constantly afraid, so I think it was a way to keep what was cool from the first Halloween, that sort of innocent ‘in’ to the story.”

While freeing themselves from any responsibility to the loose continuity of the previous sequels’ story-lines (from Halloween 4, 5 & 6’s The Curse of Thorn concept to Keri Tate’s dispatch of Myers…er, an EMT in H20/Halloween: Resurrection to Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot and 2009 sequel), the trio do plan to pay homage to the series as whole.

“Anyone who’s a fan of any of these films will find nice little Easter eggs acknowledging our salute to the filmmakers that have preceded us,” stated Green. “For us (though), it was a ‘clean slate’ type of opportunity, where if there was a little inspiration or mirror image of something, it’s very subtle in the movie because we want to start fresh for a new generation, but with (still a) great appreciation for the previous.”

(Writer’s note: check out mark 2:06 in the film’s trailer for such an example, and you’ll spot trick or treaters sporting Silver Shamrock masks from 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch).

The subject of onscreen violence is broached, in that while Green’s Halloween is intended to serve as a direct sequel in tone and style to Carpenter’s nearly bloodless classic, the slasher subgenre as a whole has historically ramped up the savagery, often is its hallmark, as the years have progressed.

“It’s something we’re really monitoring and playing with in production until we get into post,” communicated Green. “We’ve got Chris Nelson (see our interview with him here), who’s an incredible makeup and effects artist, so right now as were filming we’re keeping in mind first and foremost tension and anxiety, which I think are the greatest elements this film can offer. Even the scene we’re working on today, we’ll do takes where it’s less blood and more blood just to see how it unfolds in the editing process. For me, the original Halloween was my first horror film, and it means a lot to me, just in terms of my enthusiasm for the genre. From a splatter-slasher film to a psychological thriller, I love all those elements, so I’m learning every day and exploring every day, and I’ll know a lot more in a couple of months when I start to put the footage together to see the degree of gore, but we are in certainly very capable artistic hands.”

As for executive producer Carpenter’s guidance, “His advice was brilliant: ‘Make it relentless,’” said Green. “He had notes, which is something I was extremely nervous about. We worked very hard on the script, and we were all very excited. It’s one thing for three movie nerds, me, Danny and Jeff (Fradley), to geek out over the opportunity of maneuvering within this property, (and) another to basically go kiss the ring of the godfather and see how that goes. I was sweating bullets.”

“It’s very similar to how we do the TV show,” opened up Green of their scripting process. “We sit in a room, and luckily we’ve all known each other since college so we don’t get tired when the other person speaks, and we will just outline and discuss and talk about it, and get an outline we like. Then we just divide the outline up. Everybody takes chunks and so by the time the script is finished you have no idea what you wrote (or) what somebody else wrote. It’s all just one cohesive thing.”

Pertaining to their script, and in particular to the character of Myers, “I’d like to know as little about him or his history and abilities as possible,” the director offered. “I think there was a reason he was called The Shape (in the original) because in some ways he’s more of an essence than he is a traditional character. (It’s in) finding that line between natural and supernatural worlds, and (in a) mysterious and un-verbalized (way) as we can. In some ways it’s like a film like Jaws. There’s not a lot of personality in the shark. Technically he’s very elusive, and we’re trying to keep that as our framework and not get too much into who he is (or) why he is (or) what he’s been doing.”

McBride chimed in, “I was pushing for the removal (of the familial mythology set up in Halloween II) right off the bat. I just felt like that was an area where he wasn’t quite as scary anymore. It seemed too personalized. I wasn’t as afraid of Michael Myers anymore, because I’m not his fucking brother so he’s not coming after me. So it just seemed like new territory to bite off. Maybe we’ll look back and say, ‘Oh, it was such a mistake not to make them siblings,’ but I don’t know, it seemed as opposed to just duplicating it, would be cool to see if it gives us something else.”

Michael’s sister or not, within the new narrative Laurie’s been training for a showdown with Myers for some time, and Green was asked, ‘How are you going to refrain from turning her into Sarah Connor?’

Michael Myers and Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) in Halloween: Image Courtesy of Universal Pictures

“Did we?” laughed Green. “Jamie just started (shooting) this week, and we’ve been sculpting the character for months and months with her, and coming up with something that we thought would be fun. We’ll find that physicality as we go. We haven’t filmed the climax yet so we’ll see how badass she gets.”

As for the level of scrutiny by the fan community the project has been under since its initial announcement, Green stated, “You know, I think the most pressure I have is wanting John (Carpenter) to be involved and enthusiastic and (to) see what we’re doing and appreciate what we’re doing, and to support in those collaborative elements. At this point, creatively, for my own protection, I have to acknowledge my collaborators. Everyone on this set is working out of passion for this movie, and that’s interesting, because you don’t often see a passion project as a low-budget horror film. But this particular one is, and we’re really lucky to have the people that we have: intelligent, technical and creative minds all around us. So I’m looking at that as my shell, my place to hide and to create, and the support of these dozens of voices is incredibly gratifying, but also a bit overwhelming. If I was to, at this point in the creative process, to assume the worldwide enthusiasm for this franchise, I’d probably be very uncomfortable with that.”

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.