Just when you thought Michael Myers had gone the way of other ’70s and ’80s slasher icons and faded away, the Halloween franchise is headed back to the big screen with its infamous, masked killer. The first trailer for Halloween is out now, and it offers a peek at the mix of new elements and familiar faces bringing the franchise back just in time for the holiday.
Directed by David Gordon Green (Pineapple Express) from a script by Green, Jeff Fradley (Vice Principals), and Danny McBride (Eastbound & Down), Halloween is set 40 years after John Carpenter’s franchise-spawning 1978 film, and ignores the events of the sequels and spinoffs that followed. The film brings back original Halloween star Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode, who managed to survive Michael Myers’ killing spree four decades earlier but has been haunted by the experience ever since that night.
Along with Curtis reprising her role from Carpenter’s genre-defining film, Halloween also features Judy Greer (Arrested Development, The Descendants) as Laurie’s daughter, Karen Strode, and Andi Matichak (Replicate) as Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson. Also returning from the 1978 film is Nick Castle, who first donned the mask to portray Michael Myers — only identified as “The Shape” in the original movie’s credits — and later went on to become an accomplished director himself. (Castle directed 1984’s The Last Starfighter, among other films.) Like Curtis, Castle reprises the role he played 40 years ago in Carpenter’s horror classic.
As the Halloween trailer suggests — and directly addresses, in one particular scene — the film serves as a sequel to the 1978 movie, and dismisses the timeline and events of the prior Michael Myers-focused sequels, including the revelation that Michael is Laurie’s brother.
Carpenter also returns behind the camera, but in an executive producer and creative consultant role instead of the film’s director. Leading horror cinema production studio Blumhouse Productions (Get Out, The Purge, Paranormal Activity) produced the film. Collectively, the 10 films in the Halloween franchise to date — including spinoffs and reboots — have earned more than $308.5 million in U.S. theaters, with Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot the highest-grossing installment to date with $58.2 million.
Halloween is scheduled to hit theaters on October 19.
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