John Carpenter Offers Update on Tales for a Halloween Night TV Series

Thanks in large part to co-creating the iconic 1978 slasher Halloween, filmmaker John Carpenter has been intrinsically linked with the holiday for decades. Adding even more connections between him and All Hallow’s Eve is that he developed the comic book series Tales for a Halloween Night, which aims to honor the spookiness of the season. Reports have emerged for years about his attempts to bring the concept to life for a TV series, with Carpenter recently confirming that the project is currently in a promising place, but the coronavirus pandemic has prevented any substantial progress from happening on the series.

“There’s progress that’s always being held up by COVID. We’re trying to get it finalized,” Carpenter confirmed with ComicBook.com when asked about the status of the series. “It has a home. I won’t tell you about it right now. I’ll tell you about it when it finally comes to fruition.”

While initial reports claimed that the series would be heading to SYFY, that approach to the material fell apart and had supposedly been revived through Paramount, at least temporarily. 

“We had one [project] where SYFY wanted Tales for a Halloween Night but it quickly became evident that they just wanted the title. And I really saw a disaster on the horizon,” Carpenter’s producing partner Sandy King Carpenter revealed to ComicBook.com back in 2019. “So I went, ‘No, no, no. This is not a good idea.’ It was a greenlit series but if it’s not gonna be something cool for the fans and for the eventual audience, then I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it.”  

Despite those initial setbacks, the delays in the development of the process will seemingly only make the final product all that stronger.

“I think we have a pretty good idea what our fans want to see and we definitely have a pretty good idea what should come out from,” King explained. “If somebody’s a fan of that anthology, there should be a character to any show that comes out of it…it shouldn’t be just barfing up the books. It should be something that grows out of it or has a flavor of it or in some way meets the expectations or why are we giving it that title? Call it ‘Bozo Goes To Mars’ or something else.”

As fans wait for updates on this project, they can revisit Carpenter’s Escape from L.A., which lands on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on February 22nd.

Released in 1996, John Carpenter’s Escape from L.A. was the highly anticipated follow-up to the fan-favorite hit Escape from New York. Kurt Russell returns as anti-hero Snake Plissken, who is called upon to save the world from a doomsday device after a 9.6 quake levels most of Los Angeles. 

Stay tuned for details on the Tales for a Halloween Night TV series. Escape from L.A. hits 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray on February 22nd.

Are you looking forward to the TV series? Let us know in the comments below or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!