Freaky Director Blasts Day & Date Release Strategy

When Halloween Kills was released last year, it hit theatres and Peacock at the same time. While it seemed like that choice was due to the pandemic, the studio decided to release Halloween Ends the same way. The third installment of David Gordon Green’s trilogy was released this weekend, and it hasn’t been met with the best reviews. Not only does it have a franchise-low CinemaScore, but it is up on Rotten Tomatoes with a 40% critics score and a 56% audience score. However, Halloween is a big draw, especially during spooky season, and some believe it should have gotten the chance to thrive in theatres before hitting a streaming service. Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, took to Twitter today to share his feelings about the release format.

“Ooooooh I feel another rant coming on: Today it’s the Day & Date release strategy for Halloween Ends. Stop doing this. Please. It doesn’t work. Studios: stop gambling with filmmakers and their movies to try and prop up your fledgling streaming services. This happened to me on Freaky and it destroyed us,” Landon wrote.

He continued, “We worked SO HARD to make a fun movie. Blood sweat, and tears. Months away from our families. And for what? They love to use the term: ‘two bites of the apple’ but that’s just another way of saying ‘we’re gonna use your movie as a Guinea pig’ for our streaming service. Sorry. I begged the studio not to do this. Either circle the wagons and protect it for theatrical or just go all in on streaming. Don’t split hairs. At least the Halloween folks were made whole. We got hosed. So yeah… bitter subject. PTSD.”

Landon concluded, “Dear studios: stop trying to suck two dicks at the same time. Honor the sanctity of the theatrical experience.End rant.” You can check out his tweets here.

Why Did Jamie Lee Curtis Return To Halloween? 

“Well, I’m 62 years old, and I played Laurie Strode the first time when I was 19,” Curtis explained to ComicBook.com before the release of Halloween Kills last year. “And I never thought we would do another one. And every step of the way I haven’t thought we would do another one. So for me to say goodbye is not something I would ever do. I will say goodbye when I’m dead. I am a freelance actor, which means I am quote ‘unemployed.’ So the truth is, I have other things I’m doing, but I will never say goodbye.”

She continued, “It will be hard to imagine a circumstance that happened the organic way that this one did from an email from this one to this one on September 7th, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Los Angeles time, saying, ‘Moonshot ‘Halloween’ question mark, full creative control, Carpenter doing the score. Is this a sandbox you would play in?’ And five years and a month later, and many hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues. Millions of fans around the world are now reinventing, I mean, reassociating with Laurie and Michael. And so to say goodbye? No. Can I imagine another magical scenario? No. But I never thought I’d be here. The last thing in the world I thought I would have done again is another Halloween movie, the last thing. If Jake Gyllenhaal hadn’t called me and said, ‘Hey, my friend David would like to talk to you about a Halloween movie.’ I was like, ‘Okay, Jake.’ And then David called me, but that was after the original email between them. That was way after.”

Halloween Ends is now streaming on Peacock.