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Ryan Freimann

Halloween Tickets Are Now On Sale!

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No tricks, just treats! With the frenzy nearing a fever pitch for David Gordon Green’s upcoming and hotly-anticipated Halloween, tickets for what is shaping up to be the movie event of the season have now gone on pre-sale at Fandango!

Having received rave reviews from its premiere screenings at Toronto International Film Festival, Fantastic Fest and Salem Horror Fest, you can NOW BUY TICKETS HERE to see the film when it bows in theaters everywhere from Universal Pictures on October 19th.

Says Variety’s Peter Debruge of the film, “David Gordon Green does horror fans a favor, bringing Michael Myers’ slasher-movie saga back to its roots,” while Katie Walsh of Nerdist proclaims: “David Gordon Green delivers the best Halloween sequel ever.”

That’s not all. Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly states, “Long live Michael Myers, so maybe someone can finally kill him — in a big, funny, scary, squishy, super-meta sequel that brings it all back to John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 original,” Dreadcentral’s Jonathan Barkan muses, “After years of waiting for a Halloween sequel that felt like it did justice to John Carpenter’s original masterpiece of slasher horror, David Gordon Green has brought us a vision of terror that gives fans what they’ve been craving,” and originating filmmaker Carpenter himself has declared that following his 1978 original, Green’s is the best in the franchise.

The eleventh film in the series 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.

Exclusive NYCC Halloween Poster Revealed

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With New York Comic Con in full effect now through Sunday, legendary artist Todd McFarlane has unveiled his brand new exclusive-to-NYCC poster for David Gordon Green’s upcoming October release of Halloween.

Want one? It’s simple. Just follow the film’s official Twitter account @halloweenmovie for updates from #NYCC this weekend.

Halloween next plays tomorrow, 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 via Universal Pictures.

Co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is produced by Trancas International Films’ Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator John Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer.

Myers Menaces on First Cover of Re-launched Fangoria Magazine

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Last night HalloweenMovies.com attended the re-launch party for revered Fangoria magazine in Burbank, CA, and with the 114-page issue jam-packed with Halloween goodness, here’s a peek within.

Held at Slashback Video (the celebrated faux indie horror video rental shop art installation created by Ciara Aumentado and Halloween 2018 co-producer Ryan Turek, which is housed within Magnolia Park’s Bearded Lady’s Mystic Museum), the re-launch was hosted by Fangoria’s new publisher Dallas Sonnier and Editor-in-Chief Phil Nobil Jr., and included (among the dozens of attendees) Halloween 2018 executive producer Ryan Freimann and Academy-award winning FX artist and Myers mask sculptor Chris Nelson.

First published in 1979, Fangoria served as essential monthly reading for horror fans worldwide, until its collapse in 2015 due to financial woes.  With the assets of Fangoria having subsequently been purchased by Texas-based entertainment company Cinestate, the genre mag has now however returned as a quarterly publication, and it’s first issue is chock full of Haddonfield horror, with no less than seven articles on the series, including set visit coverage to David Gordon Green’s upcoming Halloween.

Additional Myers-centric articles include The Two Shapes Speak (an interview with actors Nick Castle and James Jude Courtney), David Gordon Green: Detour through Haddonfield (an interview with the writer and director), articles titled The Changing Shape and Halloween’s Abandoned Continuity (which delve into the franchise’s various installments and narratives), The Bastard Sons (and Daughters) of Michael Myers (a look at the original film’s impact on the slasher genre) and Lifers: My Myers House, which focuses on North Carolina resident Kenny Caperton’s recreation of the Pasadena, CA home which appeared in John Carpenter’s 1978 classic.

In addition, the magazine’s heavy with images from the latest Halloween, including the exclusive cover photo by Dan Winters.

Fangoria issue #1 is shipping now. To get your hands on a copy, subscribe here. For more on Slashback Video, ‘like’ them on Facebook at and follow them on Twitter and Instagram @SlashbackVideo

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 via Universal Pictures.

Co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is produced by Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and John Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer.

Revenge of Jamie Lee Curtis

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Welcome to the age of “big-box office post-trauma horror.”

Vulture journalist David Edelstein digs deep into the legacy of 1978’s Halloween, David Gordon Green’s upcoming direct sequel of the same name, the ‘final girl’ mythos and so much more in this ‘must read’ article with series star Jamie Lee Curtis and originating filmmaker John Carpenter.

Photo by: Robert Trachtenberg for New York Magazine

Read the article here.

*A version of this article appears in the October 1, 2018, issue of New York Magazine. Subscribe here.

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 via Universal Pictures.

Co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is produced by Trancas International Films’ Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block, with McBride, Green and star Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and Carpenter, the latter who also serves as the film’s composer.

LA Press Junket: John Carpenter & Jason Blum Talk Halloween

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On Saturday, September 15th, HalloweenMovies.com sat down with executive producer and composer John Carpenter and producer Jason Blum on the Universal backlot to discuss their forthcoming film Halloween, which is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19th, 2018.

Co-written by Jeff Fradley, Danny McBride and David Gordon Green with the latter directing, this eleventh entry in the franchise is intended as a direct sequel to Carpenter’s seminal 1978 film of the same name. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad and Bill Block additionally produce, with McBride, Green and returning star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Trancas’ Ryan Freimann.

Seated outdoors on the backlot’s Wisteria Lane, Blum said of his approach in attracting Carpenter to Green’s Halloween, which serves as a narrative recalibration of the franchise, “I went to the people who own the rights and I said that I really wanted to do a new Halloween movie, but that I had a couple of conditions. The most important condition was that I wasn’t going to do it without John Carpenter. And they said that they’d already approached him and that he’d said he wasn’t interested. And I said that I had to meet with him, because I wasn’t going to do it without him.”

“So John is very direct,” continued the Blumhouse CEO, “and he gets to the point. We had a fourteen minute meeting (together). The key, and I think this is what changed his mind, is that I said to him, ‘John, they’re going to make this movie with or without us. You may as well join the party instead of letting them do it alone.’ And I think he said, ‘Well, that may make a little sense.’”

“That’s true,” added Carpenter, “Jason challenged me to not sit on the sidelines and criticize, which is very easy to do with these sequels that have been coming out. They’re just awful. So Jason asked, ‘(Instead) why don’t you help?’ (So I said) OK, I can do that, and I helped.”

With much discussion within Halloween fandom concerning the latest film’s jettisoning of Laurie and Michael’s familial ties as established in 1981’s Halloween II (a film which in Green’s revamped Halloween universe is no longer canon), Carpenter commented, “You know the reason I wrote that was because they sold the (original Halloween) movie to NBC to air on TV, and it was too short! (So) I had to go back and shoot more material (for the television version). So I made up that silly, stupid idea (of Michael being Laurie’s brother).”

As for Laurie, inarguably cinema’s most iconic ‘final girl,’ an archetype originated by actress Curtis in Carpenter’s classic (and revisited here by her for the fourth time), Blum was asked if they would have proceeded into production on Green’s Halloween without her involvement.

Answered the forty-nine-year old producer, “We would have (but) we really wanted Jamie Lee Curtis. She had kind of quite publicly said though, ‘I’m never doing this again.’ She did the movie because of David Gordon Green. He and Danny met with her, and he shared his vision with her, and she’d actually had a meeting with Jake Gyllenhaal, who was in David’s prior movie. Jake had said to her, ‘David is a real director and someone great to work with,’ and so she agreed to do it. But yes, I think we would have (proceeded into production without her).”

Blum then asked Carpenter, “Would you have?”

“I don’t know, but the part is a great part, and she had to do it,” answered the filmmaker, before joking, “I would have beaten her up if she hadn’t.”

Also returning to the fold from Carpenter’s original is The Shape actor Nick Castle.

“David Gordon Green was sitting in my living room and said, ‘What’s going on with Nick? Has he got all his marbles?’” recalled Carpenter, “And I said, ‘Yeah, he’s great, he can do it.’” So, he called him up. And they cast him.”

“Honestly, that’s the best and smartest thing this production has done, is to get him back,” added Carpenter of Castle’s 2018 reprisal of cinema’s most infamous boogeyman (aided this time out by stunt actor James Jude Courtney). “Nick is so great in this role. His father was a choreographer, so Nick has this grace. I’ve never seen a monster walk like that. And you can’t forget it once you’ve see it. So, he’s back.”

As for the production’s decision to bring on a filmmaker whose filmography exists outside the genre, a move which surprised those who assumed that such a high-profile retool would be entrusted to a seasoned horror auteur, Blum offered, “I have a fundamental belief which exists outside of Hollywood (thinking), that great horror movies come from great directors. John has made great genre movies, and great not-genre movies. So when I look for directors, I really look for directors whose work I love. We make so many genre movies (at Blumhouse that) the scares are kind of easy. The hard part of horror is the storytelling and the script and the acting and all that stuff that’s in every movie. The horror part is the easier part. So we really look for great directors, and I have always admired Green since (his 2000 film) George Washington. I’ve tried to work with him on a bunch of different things, and he’s said, ‘No.’ With Halloween, this was the first time he said, ‘Yes.’”

And while Carpenter may indeed have passed the directorial reigns to Green, the score for the new film will be all his own (or more correctly, Carpenter’s, his son Cody’s and Daniel Davies’). Releasing from Sacred Bones Records on October 19 (you can purchase it here), the Halloween Original Motion Picture Soundtrack continues in the essence of Carpenter’s composition for the 1978 original, retaining the haunting synth sounds of its predecessor, as well as in occasion that famous 5/4 time.

      Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, photo by Sophie Gransard.

Said the seventy-year old Carpenter (who embarks on a music tour of Europe this October which culminates in a Hollywood, CA show on Halloween night – tickets are available here) of scoring the new film, “It started when we had a spotting session with Green. He told me what he wanted. We sat in front of the movie and he said, ‘Here’s this scene.’ I said, ‘What do you want to do with this scene? What is the feeling you want out of this scene?’ So that’s how we started.”

Often succinct, the artist did take a moment to reflect on his creation’s prolific nature some forty years after he first went trick or treating, by saying, “Michael Myers to me is like Godzilla. Godzilla’s an all-purpose monster. He was a bad guy, then he became a good guy. He was beloved by children. Then he was evil again. Michael Myers can fit into any slasher movie. There he is. He’s blank. He may be human. He may be supernatural. We don’t know.”

For 2018’s Halloween, “David made him human, and he’s scary,” concluded Carpenter.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Check out the trailer below.

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.

 

 

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.

Laurie’s Packing a Pistol in New Halloween Stills

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With only thirty-three days left until the theatrical debut of director and co-writer David Gordon Green’s hotly-anticipated Halloween, a handful of new photos have emerged. Have a look!

Green’s Halloween is set for release by Universal Pictures this coming October 19, 2018. Co-written by Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride, the entry is intended as a direct sequel to 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.

Joining Curtis in her final showdown with The Shape is actress Andi Matichak (pictured above) in the role of Allyson Strode, Laurie’s tenacious granddaughter.

Check out the trailer below.