Halloween 2018 Producer Explains Why It’s Not A Reboot

Halloween 2018 producer Jason Blum doesn’t consider the upcoming film to be a reboot. The first Halloween film became an instant classic upon its release in 1978, featuring the breathtaking direction and music of filmmaker John Carpenter, and the breakout performance of Jamie Lee Curtis. Not surprisingly, sequels followed due to the massive success of the original – including three more appearances by Curtis as the heroine Laurie Strode.

While the franchise appeared to come to an end in 2002 with Curtis in eighth film in the Halloween series, writer-director Rob Zombie jump-started the franchise from scratch in 2007 with his brutally violent Halloween remake. A sequel released in 2009, but since neither film was a financial success, the Halloween franchise went dormant once again for nearly a decade until a surprising development last September, when director David Gordon Green announced Curtis would reprise Laurie Strode for an all-new Halloween sequel. Now, with the release of the film less than four months away, the excitement over the return of Laurie and the iconic slasher Michael Meyers has fans brimming with anticipation.

Related: John Carpenter Has Started Scoring Halloween 2018

One of the main things Blum wants to reiterate to fans of the franchise is that the new Halloween film is not a “reboot.” In an interview with Variety about the film, Blum, the prolific horror film producer behind such hits as Get Out and Split, says the mix of talent involved with the new Halloween makes it defy the “reboot” label. He says:

“The way to get people interested is to not reboot. The term makes my hair stand up on the back of my neck. What we’re doing with Halloween is, I guess I’ll use the term ‘reinvention.’ Reboot just sounds so corporate. The way we attacked Halloween was to go after what we’ve done with a lot of other movies. David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are not known for horror, Jordan Peele was not known for horror before Get Out, so I think we’ve had a lot of success mixing genres of people – not the movie – the movie’s a straight, scary movie, so I think we’ve got a very original voice with David Gordon Green and Danny, and having Jamie Lee Curtis and John Carpenter back in the mix to me was the beginning.

With the film production nearing its completion, Blum added that he’s pleased with how it all turned out. He adds:

“I’m grateful how we brought new voices and the original voices back together in a strategic way to make what I think is a terrific movie. Fans will have to tell me if they think so, too, but I think they’ll be very happy.”

Curtis certainly seems excited about the reinvention of Halloween, as she’s been busy on social media updating fans on the progress of the film throughout the production and its upcoming panel at San Diego Comic-Con later this month. And while fans will have to wait see more footage in addition to Halloween‘s first trailer, details are spilling out from the production about how the new sequel will ignore the original film’s sequel reveal that Laurie and Michael Myers were not actually siblings.

That development alone shows how Blum, Green, and McBride are willing to shake things up. And with the involvement of Carpenter and Curtis, they’re also determined to right the ship from the wayward direction the film series took after the 1978 original. Whether fans still want to call Halloween 2018 a “reboot” or go with Blum’s “reinvention” term is their choice, but there’s no question that a different experience is in store when Michael Myers returns home in October.

More: Halloween 2018: Every Update You Need To Know

Source: Variety