The announcement that John Carpenter was going to be involved in some capacity on the new Blumhouse/Miramax take on Halloween caused a fair bit of excitement, but things have not exactly been moving quickly since then.
Jason Blum recently confirmed that there was no director attached, despite the rumours of Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Hush) and Adam Wingard (You’re Next, The Guest), and now Carpenter himself has cleared things up a bit.
Speaking to Dark Universe, Carpenter talked about why he came on board, and what the state of play is with the movie.
“I’ve known Jason for a while, he came to me and said ‘How do you feel about this now that rights have diverted?’ and I said, ‘Sure, why not? I’ll give it a shot and I’ll also try to support the director.’ We don’t have a script yet, so I can’t tell you what it’s about, but I guarantee you it’s about Halloween night and it’s about a masked killer!
I found myself bitching all these years about them making another one, so with this one I thought, well, maybe I can get in and help and make something I’m proud of instead of sitting at home grumbling.”
It’s great to hear that Carpenter’s involvement is going to be more than just being a name in the credits, as we saw with movies like The Fog remake, which he was unhappy with (and hey, weren’t we all?). The filmmaker hasn’t exactly been shy when it comes to telling people what he thinks of remakes of his films (although that Rob Zombie thing was cleared up), and we’re hopeful that his presence will lead to something worthy of the legacy he created. Or at least as good as H20. That’s a reasonable bar, right?
And the lack of a script may be disappointing, but at least they’re taking their time on this. It was assumed, given the timing of the initial announcement, that they might be aiming for a Halloween 2017 release, but that obviously looks unlikely at this point. Still, Friday The 13th and Saw: Legacy will be duking it out over the October box office next year, so there’s some good news for horror franchise fans there.
Keep up with the latest horror news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
