Halloween 2018 helped save the franchise, and while it was praised for its choice to ignore sequels and follow Carpenter's original story 40 years later, there was initially a different approach that would have taken Michael Myers only ten years forward to 1988.
John Carpenter’s Halloween helped set the mold for modern slasher films and the murderous Michael Myers has gone on to become one of the most infamous killers in all of horror. Carpenter’s original movie is a masterpiece in mood and even though the many Halloween sequels stray from the source material and take Michael Myers in more ridiculous directions, they still usually have something redeeming to bring to offer to the genre.
The Halloween films have gone through more changes and reboots than any other horror franchise, but 2018’s Halloween got the movies back on track. The rebooted sequel ignores the extraneous baggage of the franchise and operates as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original movie. A return to the stripped down roots of the first movie have resulted in even more sequels on the way, but during the heyday of Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies, there was actually an earlier attempt to send the franchise back to the past.
Why Halloween 2018 Was Originally Set In 1988
Rob Zombie’s Halloween reboot and its sequel are controversial entries in the franchise, but were still successful enough to push a Halloween 3 into development. The sequel was supposed to follow Zombie's previous films, but the movie took a very different approach after both Zombie and the film's star, Scout Taylor-Compton, walked away. After years of struggling to make a new film work, the Saw franchise's Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton took over the project with the aim to take the Halloween movies back to the beginning.
Melton and Dunstan’s Halloween Returns was going to be a sequel to the first two movies that was set back in 1988, ten years after the original tragedy. Michael Myers is on death row for his crimes, but when a power outage takes place at the prison he gets loose and sets his sights on the children of his former victims who are there to watch his execution. The film would respectfully carry on the story from Carpenter’s original movies, but also use the new characters as a way to introduce a new, younger generation to Michael Myers.
Laurie Strode wasn’t going to be present in Halloween Returns, but this hypothetical sequel seems like it could have been a satisfying return to the series. The sequel got as far along as entering production, but when Dimension lost the rights to the franchise in 2016, the whole project fell apart. Thankfully, what followed with Blumhouse at the helm has restored new hope to the Halloween series and two more installments will follow the 2018 reboot in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
