Jamie Lee Curtis has never been much for sanding down the sharper edges of whatever has been on her mind, and she’s gotten extra spicy in recent years, veering close towards possible celebrity cancellation, only to avoid certain death. But after the Charlie Kirk blowback last year—mourning the hatemonger’s death and then apologizing for it later— and her recent swipe at Timothée Chalamet’s opera-and-ballet comments, she is arguably starting to drift back toward that danger zone again—where candor turns into headline bait, and causes self-inflicted trouble. At SXSW, her blunt force nature did it again, this time taking a crack at the bargain-basement economics behind producer Jason Blum’s horror empire.
Speaking during a SXSW panel, Curtis said she didn’t know David Gordon Green’s 2018 “Halloween” revival was part of a bigger three-film plan when she signed on. That part only arrived later, and once it did, so did the bluntest line in the story. “Jason Blum is notoriously cheap. How do you make low-budget movies? You don’t pay people,” she said frankly. “That’s the model,” Curtis added that if she’d been told from the jump that it was going to be a trilogy, she didn’t think she would have said yes.
Curtis also made sure to give Blum his due before laying into the economics. “The only reason I am sitting in this chair today is because of Jason. Jason Blum, who runs Blumhouse, is the one who brought back the ‘Halloween’ movies,” she said. But once Green told her otherwise, she moved fast: “While we were editing and doing the mix, David said, ‘You know it’s a trilogy.’ I was like, ‘Uh, no.’ I went to Jason Blum and said, ‘I have some ideas, maybe you could give me a first look deal, just pay me a little money,’” she recalled. “I said to Jason, ‘How about a little development deal?’ And I owed him two ‘Halloween’ movies, so what was he gonna say?”
That development money had a purpose. Curtis said she wanted the arrangement so she could keep backing filmmaker Russell Goldman while trying to get “Mother Nature” made. Goldman now works in development for Comet Pictures, and his feature debut, “Sender,” premiered at SXSW with Curtis among its producers. In her telling, the two extra “Halloween” movies became a way to open up room for producing work she actually wanted to build, not just another pass through franchise maintenance.
The math behind the trilogy has not been mysterious. Green’s 2018 “Halloween” grossed $159.3 million domestically and $255.5 million worldwide, and Universal formalized the follow-up plan in July 2019 with “Halloween Kills” and “Halloween Ends.” Curtis stayed with the franchise, but her SXSW comments made clear she did not sign up expecting that full run. Once the trilogy plan came into view, she said, she made sure there was at least something in it for her beyond simply showing up again as Laurie Strode.
