Halloween Ends Director “Never Considered” Making the Movie a Laurie vs. Michael Showdown

The final chapter in the Halloween reboot trilogy arrived a couple of weeks ago and created all sorts of discourse amongst fans. Halloween Ends is a wildly divisive film, largely because of its decision to shift the attention away from Laurie Strode and Michael Myers. The characters are active in the story, but Halloween Ends instead focuses on Corey Cunningham’s transition into a killer and his relationship with Laurie’s granddaughter. Some fans were disappointed there wasn’t a major showdown between Laurie and Michael to end their story, but director David Gordon Green has said that idea was never actually on the table.

“We had to decide how we wanted to wrap up these characters. How do we want to make it not just a nice, neat bow on a franchise? Honestly, we never once considered making a Laurie and Michael movie,” Green told Movie Maker in a recent interview. “The concept that it should be a final showdown-type brawl never even crossed our minds. I wanted to see where it would go. I wanted one to win, one to die. But we were always more ambitious with that. So how did we want to go out? By doing what no one except us would do: make a love story. It’s our version of going out with a bang and opening our hearts to this community and these characters.”

What Is Halloween Ends About?

Instead of being a grand showdown between franchise icons Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, the focus shifts to how their roles in the town’s history have aided the birth of a new kind of evil. The story is about Haddonfield, and how its negligence caused the cycle to repeat itself.

“I’ve had an itch to do a love story, which I haven’t done in a while. I tried to infuse it into my Boston Marathon bombing movie, Stronger, where the concept was so heavy. I said, ‘How do we not make it about terrorists? Let’s make it about love.’ I had a lot of those same urges to not make this just about a psychopath,” said Green. “Instead, we made it about what can create the psychopath, without having to go into a Michael Myers psychological backstory. People have tried to do it and it isn’t interesting to me because it tends to make him less scary as an entity. But can we get into the development of evil? What a community that neglects the well being of their own can unleash on themselves in a way that they didn’t intend. That’s something that’s fascinating and I think it happens all the time.”

Halloween Ends is currently playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock.