Earlier this month, the report came out that not only had work already begun on the follow-up to David Gordon Green’s Halloween, but that both Green and his co-writer Danny McBride were not expected to return. And while the movie’s phenomenal box office success has made a sequel feel inevitable, some recent statements from McBride himself cast doubt on at least parts of what we’ve previously heard.
Speaking with Deadline, the scribe said that the team are currently in talks over where to take things with Michael Myers’ next outing, and that he has some ideas he might like to try.
“We definitely have ideas of what we would do. I think we did not allow ourselves to really indulge those ideas until the movie came out. We just wanted to put all our hopes and dreams in having this film stick the landing. But we do have thoughts and ideas of what we could possibly do. We hadn’t invested a ton of time on them, but now we’re being asked to figure it out. There are definitely talks on whether we will do more of them and we’re just trying to see what best makes sense.”
Though these new comments seem to contradict the previous report that McBride isn’t involved in the sequel, Green’s likelihood of returning remains up for debate. For one thing, the Prince Avalanche helmsman’s career shows constant movement between styles and genres, from comedies like Pineapple Express, to last year’s more serious-minded biopic Stronger, suggesting that Green may not be the kind to stick around for a sequel.
At the same time, the filmmaker has also hinted that the new Halloween contains the seeds for stories that could be explored later down the line, suggesting that he may see a future in this franchise for himself after all. In any case, if Green does come back for another round then that pretty much puts Jamie Lee Curtis in the bag too, since the actress explicitly stated earlier this week that she’d return if the director did.
There’ll be time to figure out the details, but at the moment, Blumhouse Productions must be feeling pretty happy with how this latest Halloween turned out. With the flick already surpassing the $100 million mark, it’s clear that a sequel is happening, whether McBride, Green, and Curtis are there for it or not.