‘Halloween’ Sequel Casts Laurie Strode’s Granddaughter

After months of relative silence surrounding the upcoming sequel in the Halloween franchise, the film has added Andi Matichak to its cast, playing Allyson, the granddaughter of Jamie Lee Curtis‘ Laurie Strode. Deadline also reports that Judy Greer, previously reported to be joining the cast, is officially playing Laurie’s daughter.

The casting announcement is a bit of good news for the sequel, with the most recent updates being that production was reportedly delayed until January of next year, after initially being scheduled to shoot earlier this fall.

Another bit of good news that fans have recently heard is what co-writer Danny McBride aims to capture with the upcoming film.

“The original is all about tension. Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) doesn’t even know that Michael Myers exists until the last minutes of the movie,” McBride told the Charleston City Paper. “So much of it you’re in anticipation of what’s going to happen and the dread that [director John] Carpenter spins so effortlessly in that film, I think we were really trying to get it back to that. We’re trying to mine that dread. Mine that tension and not just go for gore and ultra-violence that you see some horror movies lean on.”

Compared to many other slashers that attempted to recreate Halloween‘s success, the series has never leaned too heavily into graphic depictions of violence, but with films like the Saw series gaining prominence in recent years, audiences have grown accustomed to buckets of blood.

“To us, it was all about bringing back the creep factor and trying to find the horror in your own backyard, in our own homes,” McBride pointed out.

With the amount of different sequels and attempts at remakes for the film, audiences were quite wary following the announcement that the project would be moving forward. One of the most exciting bits of news was the confirmation that Curtis would return to the franchise after nearly two decades.

“I think everyone was kind of on the mindset of it’d be a grab to get her, but no one really knew if we would be able to,” McBride shared of the experience to Yahoo!. “So Dave and I just busted our ass on this script to really make that Laurie Strode character something she wouldn’t be able to say no to. When we finished the script, we sent it to her, and she said she was in. So we just flipped out. We were over the moon about her involvement.”

The Halloween sequel is slated to hit theaters on October 19, 2018.

[H/T Deadline]