‘Halloween’ Series Producer Wants a William Shatner Appearance

Longtime Halloween franchise producer Malek Akkad has tried for and hopes to win an appearance by [...]

Longtime Halloween franchise producer Malek Akkad has tried for and hopes to win an appearance by Star Trek legend William Shatner, whose face inspired the iconic blank mask worn by masked murderer Michael Myers.

A mold of Shatner's face used in 1975's Robert Fuest-directed horror The Devil's Rain was utilized by Don Post Studios to craft Captain Kirk Star Trek masks, one of which was modified by the original Halloween filmmakers to give Michael Myers — the Shape — his eerie white and unmistakable mask.

Asked by Halloween Movies if Shatner has commented on his association with Michael Myers, Akkad answered, "Not to me directly, and from what I hear he doesn't really acknowledge it."

"I think he makes light of it. We actually have one of the original impressions of Shatner in our office in L.A., so obviously we're really grateful to him, and in certain ways we've tried to reach out to him [to] maybe do an appearance," Akkad said. "Lord know he's busy enough with Star Trek stuff... but you never know."

Shatner, a regular on the convention circuit, previously addressed his ties to the knife-wielding serial killer during Dragon-Con in 2011.

"Apparently the director said, 'We want to find a mask for the character that was terrorizing.' So they ran out to a store and they bought a mask of my face," Shatner recounted.

"This was used in the movie Halloween and it was my face on the deadly character who killed people. The addendum to that is, one Halloween, my kids said, 'I want to go trick-or-treating.' And I wanted to go with them. So I put on the mask [laughs], 'Trick or treat!' And we all laughed at that for a while. Then I got more candy than they did."

The original 40-year-old mask has since weathered after former owner Dick Warlock, the under-the-mask Michael Myers stunt performer in 1981's Halloween II, improperly stored the prop in an Elvis Presley tin container.

A new prop mask was crafted for Blumhouse-produced four-decades-later sequel Halloween by The Walking Dead and Avengers: Infinity War FX artist Christopher Allen Nelson, who faithfully recreated and subsequently aged up the mask from John Carpenter's 1978 original.

Halloween, starring Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, and Andi Matichak, opens October 19.

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