SYFY Developing Bring It On Halloween Special

Remember the 2000 cheerleader movie Bring It On? If you were alive and conscious of pop culture back then, of course you do! It was a huge hit! Did you know that in the time since its release, the film has had no less than five sequels, none of which feature any of the original cast? Well, if you knew that, you’ve got a leg up on most of us — and you won’t be as surprised as we were to learn that Syfy is developing a slasher-themed Bring It On Halloween special that will pit a team of desperate cheerleaders against a mask-wearing psychopath.

The announcement came as part of a broader programming announcement from Syfy, which also included details about Chucky, a remake of Roger Corman’s Slumber Party Massacre, and a 10-episode prestige miniseries version of George A. Romero’s Day of the Dead. There is no official cast announcement or targeted release date (aside from 2022 in general) for Bring It On: Halloween.

Universal, who are corporate partners with Syfy and who distribute the Bring It On movies, also distributed the most recent Halloween revival, which reunited Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) with serial killer Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney), who through the magic of reboots is no longer Laurie’s estranged brother. Is it too much to ask that the Halloween in Bring It On: Halloween means the masked madman in the cheerleader horror-comedy might be The Shape?

Here’s how Syfy Wire describes the special:

• Next up, we’re waving our pom poms in the air for Bring It On: Halloween, an original movie premiering in 2022. “Held down by restrictive rules, an embattled cheerleading squad seeks the freedom of a creepy, closed school gym to practice for regionals, but when members of the squad start to disappear, the cheerleaders must unmask their assailant to save themselves,” reads the official synopsis.

While the cheerleading element is certainly here, the idea of transplanting the Bring It On brand into a horror setting feels a little similar to what Warner Bros. and Syfy did in 2019 with The Banana Splits Movie, which reimagined the children’s puppet series as a horror movie by incorporating meta elements about the show losing relevance with modern audiences and facing cancellation. It also marks the first time that Bring It On has made a major genre shift, with each of the previous sequels centering pretty squarely on a traditional narrative about a cheerleading competition.