Danny McBride Nearly Pitched Filming ‘Halloween’ Sequels Back-to-Back

Horror fandom is having a field day with the first trailer for the upcoming Halloween reboot/sequel from Danny McBride and David Gordon Green, but what most don’t know about the new film is that it was almost pitched as two, back-to-back films.

While on the set of Halloween earlier this year, EW spoke to McBride about his idea for the entire franchise going forward. As it turned out, the creative team (which consists of himself, Green, and co-writer Jeff Fradley) originally planned on pitching Halloween as two movies that would shoot back-to-back.

However, not wanting to get ahead of themselves, McBride & Co. opted to just take this thing one movie at a time.

“We were going to shoot two of them back-to-back,” said McBride. “Then we were like, Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This could come out, and everyone could hate us, and we’d never work again. So, let’s not have to sit around for a year while we wait for another movie to come out that we know people aren’t going to like. So, we were like, Let’s learn from this, and see what works, and what doesn’t. But we definitely have an idea of where we would go [with] this branch of the story and hopefully we get a chance to do it.”

The idea of filming sequels back-to-back isn’t entirely new in today’s landscape. Peter Jackson famously shot the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy at once, and spread the footage out over the course of three films in three years. Marvel Studios took the same approach to the third and fourth Avengers films. Both Infinity War and Avengers 4 were filmed at the same time, but they will come out one year apart from one another.

It’s good to know that McBride and his cohorts are being careful enough with this property that they don’t want to give the hardcore fans something that they don’t enjoy. Perhaps even more exciting though, is the fact that the team already has plans for a Halloween sequel should this movie do well.

What do you think of McBride’s approach to the Halloween franchise? Are you glad he only pitched one movie at a time? Let us know your thoughts on the film by dropping a comment below!

Halloween, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Jamie Lee Curtis, is set to hit theaters on October 19.