One of the horror genre’s most anticipated sequels of all time comes out this year – David Gordon Green’s Halloween movie. As we all know, it’s a followup to the 1978 film of the same name. It’s also been no surprise that John Carpenter has been deeply involved with the sequel’s production – his first role in the series since working on Halloween III: Season of the Witch. As such, it’s meant a lot to fans that he finally decided to ensure that the integrity of the original film stays intact for this new sequel. But just how far has he gone to keep its legacy pure?
It seems that John Carpenter has done quite a bit. For example, it’s been revealed he persuaded David Gordon Green away from his entire opening planned for the sequel. It seems Green originally wanted to modify the original movie’s ending with the beginning moments of his sequel.
As Green himself explained in a recent interview,
“Even in the script going into production, we were going to refilm the end of the original film from a different perspective.”
He adds:
“We had this very complicated overhead view of Loomis shooting the gun, Michael going over and then the apprehension, assuming everybody was going to need a little bit to get back up to speed with where we are and we haven’t seen the movie in a long time or we’ve never seen the movie, had to invite everyone to the party and that kind of thing. We kept pushing it off.”
The idea would’ve even included digitally including a younger version of Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode.
“Jamie would’ve recreated, with a blend of Jamie and a body double similar to 19-year-old Jamie,” Green said. “We had all these ideas.”
Green even looked at different ways for including Donald Pleasance’s Dr. Loomis, which included casting a double.
“We cast a Loomis double who was our art director because we didn’t want to bring one in. He looked exactly like him.”
If you’re wondering why they didn’t use CGI, they considered that option too.
“There was that conversation,” Green said. “There was conversation of utilizing footage from the original film and digitally altering it so we got some other interesting elements. All this stuff starts to cost money and when you look at what we’re trying to do, do you need the gimmick? Do you need the exposition? Do you need the setup?”
They even planned to have a younger version of Sheriff Hawkins, the new sheriff of Haddonfield 40 years after Michael was apprehended in 1978.
“I cast him,” Green said. “He was our key set PA who we hired because he looked like Will Patton.”
But thankfully John Carpenter convinced David Gordon Green not to do the opening.
“This was Carpenter actually calming me down on set,” Green said. “I’m like, ‘Nobody’s going to know what’s happening and where we’re coming from.’ He’s like, ‘Just trust ‘em and leave ‘em alone and let ‘em figure it out.’”
I’m extremely happy that Carpenter did persuade him – the last thing any fan wants is a sequel that changes the original in any way. As we saw with a similar concept executed in 2013’s Texas Chainsaw 3D, it would’ve probably turned out cheesy and incoherent.
Interestingly, however, the planned opening did have some elements pop up throughout the finished film.
“We rebuilt the bedroom from the climax of the original film so we have the bones of this room,” Green said. “Budgets are getting tighter, schedule’s getting tighter. We’re trying to jam this movie and finish it up. Then we’re like, ‘Screw it. Let’d not do that. If we need it later, we can always rebuild it.’ So we turned the set of the house into Laurie’s bedroom. So the scene in the climax with all the mannequins is to the square inch a rebuild of that room. The closet’s in the same place, the balcony’s in the same place. All those things landed so it became, out of cost necessity, this incredible subconscious (because I don’t think anybody would pick that up) rebuild of an environment from the original film.”
Halloween hits theaters on October 19, 2018.