With Halloween Kills, director David Gordon Green went big – spreading the effects of Michael Myers’ violent rampage across the wider Haddonfield area, whipping up a frenzy on the streets of the town itself and over at the Haddonfield Memorial Hospital. But if the law of sequel escalation might have you imagining an even bigger third entry to cap off Green’s trilogy, the filmmaker has other plans. Speaking on the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast, he opened up about his smaller-scale plans for the upcoming Halloween Ends – due to arrive this time next year, and pitting the surviving characters against the Shape once more.
If Kills was an expansive horror tale, Ends is instead “a much more intimate movie,” says Green. “There’s not a lot of games in it, there’s not a lot of wittiness and retro joy. It’s kind of a coming-of-age film, and it’s a very different tone. And that’s what excited me about it, is to have the three chapters that I’ve been involved in be very different from each other. They are all there to honour Carpenter, but aren’t necessary just emulating him.”
And speaking of honouring John Carpenter, Green mentioned a curious influence for his third Halloween – the legendary director’s 1983 adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine. “I sent Carpenter the new draft of Halloween Ends the other night, and I said, ‘If it feels too Christine, let me know’,” says Green, noting how his next film will be a broader tribute to the thematic and cinematic occupations of the director who first birthed the original Halloween in 1978. “For Halloween Ends, it’s jut a love of Carpenter, you know. It’s more than just, ‘Hey, here’s a character and a community that you’ve created.’ It’s, ‘Here’s an appreciation of your legendary body of work.”
Will Green be swapping Michael Myers out for a 1958 Plymouth Fury? Will he play the film out to the sounds of ‘Bad To The Bone’? Will there be vehicular possession involved? Only time will tell.
Halloween Kills is in cinemas now. Listen to the full David Gordon Green interview on the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast now – read more here about how to listen.