Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode is horror’s original final girl, having survived a whole film of being menaced by Michael Myers. She’d go on to appear in a few subsequent Halloween movies and, to the delight of fans everywhere, it was recently announced that she’ll reprise the role in next year’s outing.
You might think the actress would have a bit of horror fatigue by now, especially as her character (apparently) died in Halloween: Resurrection, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. In a recent interview with Yahoo, Danny McBride revealed the following when asked how him and David Gordon Green got her to return.
We pitched to Carpenter, and he was into it, which kind of blew David and me away, but I still think nobody was really talking about Jamie… I think everyone was kind of on the mindset of it’d be a grab to get her, but no one really knew if we would be able to.
So David and I just busted our ass on this script to really make that Laurie Strode character something she wouldn’t be able to say no to. When we finished the script, we sent it to her, and she said she was in. So we just flipped out. We were over the moon about her involvement.
So, no tricks, no fancy convincing, and no big pay day, just good old-fashioned quality writing and complex characterization. This has got to bode well for the upcoming film, which in an interesting chronological shift positions itself as a direct sequel to the original Halloween that disregards the various installments released over the years. I struggle to think of many films that have taken this tack, but think about it for a moment and you start to see the logic.
Of course, anyone who’s at all interested in horror will have seen Halloween. It’s a cornerstone of the genre, having originated all those tropes that Scream so successfully skewered and, on purely cinematic grounds, is a goddamn excellent piece of work. However, when it comes to the sequels, only the most devoted gorehound will have sat through all ten films (which are of of varying quality). So, this new outing should provide an excellent jumping on point.
It also neatly sidesteps the question of how to deal with Rob Zombie’s two reboot movies, which have their detractors but in my opinion are actually pretty great. As for McBride and Green’s take on the property, my hopes are high as hell for this new Halloween, which might just be able to live up to John Carpenter’s classic.