Halloween Kills: Anthony Michael Hall Felt "Total Freedom" Taking Over Paul Rudd's Role

Blumhouse's recent reboot of the Halloween franchise reset a lot of the franchise's continuity, keeping true to the events of the original 1978 film and continuing the story of Laurie Strode and Michael Myers in the present day. This restructuring of the complicated canon provided Halloween Kills with some creative freedom and the ability to recast certain roles from previous films, if necessary. While Paul Rudd played the character of a young adult Tommy Doyle in Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, he wasn't able to participate in the new movie, and Anthony Michael Hall took on the role instead.

If you recall, Tommy Doyle was the young boy that Laurie Strode babysat in the original Halloween. He returned to the franchise with a prominent role in The Curse of Michael Myers, and now he has a substantial part in Halloween Kills. Hall took over the role from Rudd for this new movie, but as the actor explained to ComicBook.com in a recent interview, there wasn't a lot of pressure to try and recreate anything that Rudd had done.

"I kind of just felt total freedom to make my own," Hall told us. "I appreciate, I love Paul's work, he was great and I know that he gave a call to [director] David [Gordon Green] during the making of the production, so they kind of touched base, but I was just excited to be a part of it, man. And I just kind of take the circumstances head on and just go with what's there in the script, you know, but we had a great time, we really did."

Given that 2018's Halloween basically erases most of the Halloween sequels from continuity, seeing a new face play Tommy Doyle really isn't all that big of a deal. Jamie Lee Curtis needed to return as Laurie, but Tommy was just a kid in the first movie, so his look as an adult was open to interpretation if you removed the other films. 

The most important thing is really just that Tommy is in the movie at all. Fans of franchises like these love when the stories come back around to where they started, so Tommy Doyle having a significant role in 2021 is certainly exciting.

Have you watched Halloween Kills yet? What do you think of Anthony Michael Hall's take on Tommy Doyle? Let us know in the comments!

Halloween Kills is now in theaters and streaming on Peacock.

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