Halloween Kills: Jason Blum Explains Why He’s “Glad” They Delayed the Release and Why He’ll Never Take Theaters For Granted Again

Halloween Kills had its U.S. premiere at Beyond Fest in Los Angeles this weekend, and it was clear everyone in the crowd was thrilled to be back at the movies. The follow-up to the 2018 Halloween was supposed to hit theaters last October but was pushed back a whole year due to the pandemic. When the movie finally hits theaters later this month, it was also be released on Peacock. It was recently revealed that producer Jason Blum was the one who decided to release the movie on the streaming service, but the creative is still hoping folks will check out the movie on the big screen. In fact, during a Q&A at the Beyond Fest screening, Blum explained why he’s never going to take going to the movies for granted again.

“I’ve never had the experience… I mean, have we… You never have either. Where you have a movie, it’s all ready to go, and then it doesn’t happen. And so you’re sitting on it and everyone on Twitter is like, ‘Where is Halloween?’ So it’s great for people finally are going to get to see it. And get to see it, obviously, here a couple more times, and then out in the world in a couple of weeks. So it feels fantastic. It feels great. It’s going to be appreciated the way it should be appreciated. I’m very glad that we waited. There was a big question of, ‘Should we wait or not wait?’ And I’m really glad that we did, yeah,” Blum explained.

He added, “It’s just, you really miss it. It’s something that I personally, definitely, took for granted. I used to, before COVID, I lived across the street from a movie theater, and the way I would see movies was always in this theater. And it’s just something that I definitely took for granted, but I never will for the rest of my life. I’m going to feel different about going to the movies for the rest of my life. Because it’s this special thing that I never thought of as special, I just assumed it would always take place. So in that sense, that’s kind of nice. And yeah, there’s nothing like showing a movie, in a movie theater with a lot of people. And especially scary movies. Horror movies, they’re just not as fun at home, it’s just not the same thing.”

During the Q&A, Blum also revealed the most challenging thing about producing the Halloween reboot films.

“From the producing side, a producer’s job is many things,” Blum explained. “But most of all, it’s getting people to work together. And when you’re coming into a party that’s already happened for a long time, which started 40 years ago, there are a lot of people involved, with a lot of different opinions, and understandably, a lot of emotion around it. So definitely very, very different than doing an original, or even a sequel of one of our originals. The most complicated thing is getting everyone, kind of, marching towards the same goal and feeling good about it. Because if people aren’t feeling good about it, they’re not going to do good work. And that was the hardest thing. But I think, for the most part, we achieved that. And we got John Carpenter to feel good about it, and Jamie Lee Curtis, and Malek, and Miramax, and they were a lot of voices. So that was the most challenging.” 

Halloween Kills hits theaters and Peacock on October 15th.