Danny McBride is pretty well known for his on-screen comedic performances. But the actor/writer has been just as busy behind the scenes over the years. McBride has also written for shows “Eastbound And Down” and “Vice Principals” among other titles dating back to 2006. So when McBride came aboard to write the sequel to John Carpenter‘s 1978 classic, “Halloween,” he was not short on ideas. In fact, his original plan was to make two “Halloween” films back-to-back.
McBride talked to Entertainment Weekly about the production of “Halloween,” and he mentioned that the idea was to film the remake and a sequel back-to-back. “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.’”
Speaking of sequels, one of the biggest discussions surrounding the new “Halloween” is how the filmmakers involved are ignoring all the previous sequels. And yes, there are a lot of sequels to ignore. However, in an interview with EW, director David Gordon Green, who worked with McBride on “Vice Principals” and various other projects, explains why that decision was made.
“We watched all of them and I can actually enjoy all of them,” Green said. “But there just felt like such a simple truth to the original. I think by the time you add Michael and Laurie’s relationship, being family, or he’s only hunting his family, it takes that ‘Boogeyman’ out of it. I want everyone to be afraid of him. The first one really had that anonymity to who he was. [We are] stripping down the backstory, and philosophy, and motivation, and, you know, themes of cults, and things like that. In this one, we’re trying to go bare bones and tell a horrifying story of questions that have no answers. It’s just bad shit that happens.”
“Halloween” hits theater just in time for the titular holiday on October 19.