A few years back, when David Gordon Green revived the dormant Halloween franchise with original Final Girl Jamie Lee Curtis back in the lead role, it felt like the horror gods were trying to right several wrongs that had occurred inside of that franchise. I mean, the original John Carpenter Halloween is widely considered to be one of the best horror movies ever made. But lame sequels had watered down the reputation of the Halloween series (leading to some of our writers losing interest in the series completely), and it was time for Curtis’s Laurie Strode to step in and set things right. Naturally, Curtis and Carpenter are key figures in reviving the Halloween series, but did you also know that Jake Gyllenhaal played a significant role?
As it turns out, Jake Gyllenhaal was the one who put Jamie Lee Curtis in touch with David Gordon Green in the first place. The filmmaker had already established himself through well-received dramas (All the Real Girls) and comedies (Your Highness), but had a concept for a Halloween movie that he wanted to share. And, as Jamie Lee Curtis explains it to SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar), it was Gyllenhall who facilitated the conversation. She said:
I was sitting in the exact place I am sitting right now when my phone rang, and it was Jake Gyllenhaal. I picked up the phone and he said, 'Hey Jame, my friend David Gordon Green' – who he had just worked with on the movie Stronger – 'would like to talk to you about a Halloween movie.' That was in 2017, in the summer. The last thing I thought five years ago that I would be doing would be a Halloween movie.
Sometimes that’s all it takes to relaunch a seminal franchise, and to view a classic story through a new lens. In the original Halloween, Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was the teenaged babysitter who came face to face with pure evil in the form of Michael Myers. Curtis showed up in various Halloween movies after the fact, though none came close to the original. We went ahead and ranked all of the Halloween movies, just to see where they fell. Some of them included Curtis back in her role. But when David Gordon Green took over the series, they claimed they were making direct sequels ONLY to the original. And so this trilogy that concludes with Halloween Ends puts a cap on the story that Jamie Lee Curtis swears she never expected to return to. As she goes on to tell SFX:
And here I am, [laughs], having now completed three of them with a fantastic creative group of people. That has not only been satisfying for me personally and creatively, but it has launched me creatively into a whole other world. I have a creative life now, because of the Halloween movie, and the success. I now have a partnership with Jason Blum at Blumhouse, I have a production company, I’ve written a horror film that I will direct, I am producing a television series, I am buying books. All of that was the last thing I thought I would be doing five years ago. So to say never is stupid.
Apparently the upcoming sequel Halloween Ends is going to bring closure to Laurie’s ongoing battle with Michael, the demon that has plagued her essentially the duration of her life. Curtis already has teased a major change for Laurie heading into this movie, which might be explained by the time jump the story makes from its predecessor, Halloween Kills.
At the very least, you will have your choice as to how you want to consume this “final” chapter in the Halloween saga, as David Gordon Green’s Halloween Ends will be in theaters and on the streaming service Peacock beginning on October 14.
