Halloween became one of the biggest horror hits of 2018, as it managed to not only honor longtime fans of the franchise but also fiound new ways to pave a new path forward. The film was also a financial success, taking in $255 million worldwide on a reported budget of $10 million. A sequel seemed inevitable, but official confirmation only came last month, though that announcement confirmed that not one, but two sequels were moving forward, both from writers David Gordon Green and Danny McBride, with Green also directing. McBride recently gave an update on the status of the two projects, revealing that filming is only a few weeks away.
“Halloween 2 starts filming in like three weeks,” McBride shared with Polygon. “That’s already off to the races. The script is almost finished for the third one. Hopefully that’ll go at the same time next year.”
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With horror franchises often waiting to see if new films are a success before announcing a sequel, the reveal that two sequels, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, were moving forward was an unconventional move. However, both Green and McBride have regularly revealed that their original pitch before landing the Halloween gig was for a trilogy, though it’s unclear if these two films are what the filmmakers originally envisioned, or if that initial outlook has changed.
The pair previously revealed that, nearly as soon as the first film was finished, talks began for them to return to complete their vision.
“Relaunching it for just one, we wanted it to have a bigger story,” McBride pointed out to Collider. “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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