David Gordon Green, director of the ongoing Halloween trilogy, revealed that Halloween Ends will take place in the present following a post-Halloween Kills time jump, with the film set to acknowledge the COVID-19 pandemic and other current events. Beginning with the simply titled Halloween in 2018, Green’s trilogy serves as a direct sequel to filmmaker and composer John Carpenter’s 1978 classic slasher, Halloween. The updated films follow an older but still post-traumatic Laurie Strode as she faces off against Michael Myers. The second installment of the series, Halloween Kills, hits theaters on October 15.
Jamie Lee Curtis returns to lead the cast of Halloween Kills alongside Andi Matichak, Judy Greer, Charles Cyphers, Will Patton, Nancy Stephens, Dylan Arnold and Omar Dersey. Kyle Richards is reprising her 1978 role as Lindsey Wallace, with Anthony Michael Hall joining to play Tommy Doyle. Which cast members return for Halloween Ends depends on how exactly the second installment transpires, and who survives the showdown between Michael and the people of Haddonfield, Illinois.
Per Uproxx, Green confirms that there will be a multi-year break in the action between Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, giving the Haddonfield townspeople a much needed respite. The first film in the installment takes place on Halloween in 2018, with Kills set to pick up right where part one left off: Michael escaping Laurie’s fiery trap. After two films set on the same night in 2018, Ends will lurch ahead to present day, when Michael is presumably still wreaking havoc in Haddonfield. In addition to dealing with the crazed killer, Laurie and company will have to confront the struggles of a pandemic-stricken world. As Green says, the characters will be juggling multiple traumas. Read the director’s full quote below:
“So if you think about it, I mean, where we’re leaving these characters on Halloween 2018, the world is a different place. So not only do they have their immediate world affected by that trauma, having time to process that trauma – and that’s a specific and immediate traumatic event in the community of Haddonfield. But then they also had a worldwide pandemic and peculiar politics and another million things that turned their world upside down.”
Green had previously hinted at the prospect of a Halloween Ends time jump, indicating that the franchise would “take a beat” before resuming the narrative. Should the film’s scheduling go to plan, that would place the events of part three in October 2022, just in time for Michael’s favorite holiday. Green and his co-writers Danny McBride, Chris Bernier, and Paul Brad Logan have officially ironed out the plot’s final details, having just completed the Halloween Ends script.
There are a number of television series and other productions that are beginning to exist within this new pandemic reality, but Halloween Ends promises to be among the first horror films to do so. The sci-fi thriller film, Songbird, tackled the pandemic in 2020, with writer/director Adam Mason opting to set his film in 2024 amid the scourge of supervirus COVID-23. Critics panned the film, calling it a work of crass fear-mongering. While it’s unclear just how much COVID will factor in to Halloween Ends, hopefully Green and his team will address the pandemic more tactfully than other cruder attempts. Perhaps when Halloween Ends premieres in 2022, Michael won’t be the only face behind a mask.
Source: Uproxx
