A decade ago Halloween as a franchise was pretty much dead and buried. The last film from the rebooted Rob Zombie universe of the character stumbled to a $33+ million domestic take at box office. Zombie had planned a 3rd film but given the response was so negative and Dimension Films itself seemed to not wanna do anything else with the franchise.
The lead star of the franchise was long gone as well with Jamie Lee Curtis receiving a less than honorable death in Halloween : Resurrection . A fact many were very angry over for years ; the series limped into a reboot to try and lure a new generation. Zombie's films were so ill-received that after plans for a 3D sequel were announced they never happened. Things weren't looking good.
Then 2016 happened.....
John Carpenter had birthed Halloween. It was his basically. A fact that for a number of years he never went anywhere near the sequels beyond writing Halloween II . Because as Carpenter would tell ; he never believed in a sequel to the film and Universal and later Dimension Films took over doing sequel after sequel. Of course in mid 1980's ; Universal did try to move on from the evil Michael Myers. But after a bad response by fans to Halloween III ; the anthology horror concept was dropped. Myers came back to kill repeatedly again.
In 2016 things changed a lot. Dimension Films after 20+ years of owning the rights to make Halloween movies lost them. They were obtained by Blumhouse Productions and Universal . Its then the company detailed that Carpenter was coming back to Halloween. As creative consultant , Executive producer and composer of the music. It was a stunning shock...then the biggest....Curtis was back as Laurie Strode again.
The last one was a head scratch deal as fans brought up she had died back in the late 1990's "Halloween Resurrection" film. Its not til later that people would learn of the risky move that the writers and Carpenter decided to do .... (spoilers below folks)...
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- The proposed idea was to retcon every film since 1978 . That every film never existed and that for 40 years Laurie Strode and Michael Myers had never crossed paths in that time. There was no brother/sister connection that was pushed into the 2nd film to try and justify why Myers was so intent on killing Strode. No ...that was gone.
It was a risky move in a lot of ways. Halloween as a franchise was a mess at times. 3 sequels in the 1980's featured cults and more. 2 in the 1990's retconned them but added more confusion. In the 2000's , Zombie's films became jokes about white horses. Then you had the fact Jamie Lee Curtis was near 60 and hadn't really done a huge film in 8+ years. (You Again)
So with a franchise that seemed outta steam by its reboot films in 2000's and one studio giving up on it... what could Blumhouse do here ? Well the trailer showed exactly what they would do.
The film would do the best opening of any Halloween film in its time and has earned $77.5+ million opening week. It also showed that fans would tune in to see an older woman lead a film. By next week it should do well over $100+ million domestically.
Now some will question how this film did this. So I'll explain...
- Blumhouse Productions is a horror studio and since 2008 has released mostly horror films to wide success from The Purge film series to others. They have became the studio where popular horror films has became a norm for them. So they knew exactly what they would do with a Halloween franchise and Michael Myers.
- People wanted to see the classic battle of Laurie Strode vs Michael Myers. The trailer makes a point to tell us ..this is about those 2 and the collision course they are on again. You don't have to watch any other film or know the history. All you have to do is watch the 1st film from 1978 and jump to this one. Which makes it easy for newer generation of people to click with.
- John Carpenter being involved after years away was something people wanted. Carpenter is a legend in film and composing so getting him back and letting him be involved was a solid move. You can tell through the film that his hands were all over the film in a way. From the easter eggs to Halloween III to this.
What does this mean for Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street moving forward ? Well as Blumhouse showed age does not damn well matter for horror icons. Both franchises have had reboot films fail the last decade and now studios have to be scratching their chins and thinking , if it worked for Halloween ...why not ...Jason or Freddy ?
In all a big risk move by doing this paid off for Blumhouse. They have revived a horror franchise and with Friday the 13th film rights up in the air ; perhaps they should get that one next.