Halloween Remake Star Glad Planned Third Movie Didn't Happen

Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake star Scout Taylor-Compton is glad a planned third movie didn’t move forward. Halloween: Resurrection from 2002 was the eighth entry in the franchise, but despite turning a decent profit, the sequel was widely hated by fans and critics. Its lazy commentary on reality TV, the controversial opening death of series heroine Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and two different scenes where Michael Myers is beaten up by Busta Rhymes made it one of the most disliked entries in the series.

Following the reception to Resurrection, it was decided to start from scratch and remake it. Rob Zombie was given the directing job and his take was one-part prequel and one-part remake. The movie also featured a more grounded, psychological take on Michael Myers, who in the remake is a disturbed child from an abusive household. Zombie’s film was much gorier and profane than the 1978 original, and while it received mixed reviews, it was a big success. Zombie later returned to write and direct 2009’s Halloween 2, which saw the filmmaker break away from series formula and make something closer to his own style.

A third movie called Halloween 3D was set to follow this sequel, with director Patrick Lussier set to direct. Delays soon hit the project and it was eventually canceled. Now in a new interview with SyFy Wire, star Scout Taylor-Compton explains Zombie wasn’t going to return following a bad experience making Halloween 2 and she’s kind of happy the third entry didn’t ultimately go ahead.

And Rob wasn't gonna be part of it. And they pretty much cut funds in half. It was the strangest phone call I've ever gotten in my entire life. When I heard that Rob wasn't gonna be a part of it, I called Tyler [Mane] and I talked to him. And he said that he had gotten the same offer. We were so hesitant on doing it. And we saw the media, all the different directors that they had attached to it and all this stuff. I was indifferent with what I wanted to do; it seemed so unorganized and so up in the air. But then I was like, 'Well if I don't do [the movie], they're gonna get someone else to train what I've worked so hard on.' But I'm kinda glad that it didn't happen, because the way that the offer came in, it was not from loving hands.

Halloween 3D would have picked up right after the ending of 2, retconning Michael’s apparent demise and following him going on the run with his traumatized sister Laurie. After leaving a trail of bloody destruction, Michael is set on fire and disappears, with Laurie then committed to an asylum. This first act would have wrapped up loose ends from Zombie’s take, and the rest of the movie would have been closer in tone to the 1978 original, with Laurie being stalked in the asylum by a ghostly Michael. It would have also been revealed Michael’s mask melted into his face following the fire.

Zombie only had seven months to put Halloween 2 together, and an unpleasant experience with the studio during production made him swear off a third movie. Halloween 3D sounds like it was being put together under similar rushed conditions and would have been a low-budget 3D horror movie trading on the franchises name. Like Taylor-Compton says, it’s probably for the best the movie was canceled.

After being trapped in development hell for a number of years, the franchise was rebooted by Blumhouse in 2018 with David Gordon Green’s Halloween. The new film ignored every movie in the series except for the original, allowing Curtis' Laurie Strode to face off against Michael Myers again. The reboot proved to be a huge success and talk of a sequel has already begun.