Halloween Sequel Filmmakers Tease What to Expect in Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends

The original Halloween altered the landscape of slasher cinema back in 1978, with multiple sequels failing to capture the public’s attention as effectively as the franchise’s debut film. With a number of sequels spawning various narrative timelines, last year’s Halloween took things back to basics, ignoring the events of the entire franchise, minus the first film. Directed by David Gordon Green from a script he co-wrote with Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Green and McBride have confirmed that they will return to the franchise for two more sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. The duo recently teased what to expect with the upcoming films, which are set to shoot this fall.

“It’s just a continuation of it,” McBride revealed to Collider of the sequels’ story. “It’s telling the story, moving forward. It’s not another reinvention, or anything like that. It’s this world that we’ve established, and then it continues beyond the events of the first one.”

While these comments might seem obvious, with previous sequels having introduced the concept of Michael Myers being Laurie Strode’s brother and the involvement of cult rituals, it would seem as though the pair won’t feel beholden to incorporate previously introduced elements of the franchise apart from the narrative they conjured.

One of the reasons fans felt the series stagnated was the endlessly repetitive nature of the series, which regularly saw Myers “defeated,” only for the next sequel to find a way to have the character survive. Fans might have doubts that the upcoming films might be too much, too fast, but McBride assured that the next two films fall in line with the plans they had for the project since the beginning.

“Relaunching it for just one, we wanted it to have a bigger story,” the writer pointed out. “We were originally going to even shoot them back to back, but as soon as we got it up and running, we took a look at ourselves and were like, ‘You know what? We should make sure we can do one of them good, before we bite off trying to do three of them.’ So, we just put all of our efforts into trying to make the first one land. There was talk, right away, of us doing more of these. We just needed to get everybody aligned and see if everybody was down with the vision. Luckily, everyone is.”

Green added, “We had ambitions of doing two, with some big ideas, and then decided that we should see if anybody liked one at a time, and if they liked the other one, then maybe we’d build on it. And then, when that was successful, our additional ideas that weren’t integrated into that first one developed into two. We’ve written them, and we’re ready to go.”

Halloween Kills lands in theaters on October 16, 2020 and Halloween Ends lands in theaters on October 15, 2021.

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