When it came time to make the new Halloween, director David Gordon Green had plans to go back and recreate the end of the original film. Not only that, he also planned to make some changes. Thankfully, original Halloween director John Carpenter talked him out of it. Learn how David Gordon Green would’ve changed the Halloween ending below.
As you may have heard, the 2018 Halloween ignores every other Halloween sequel, and instead serves as a follow-up to John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic. Which means the ending of Carpenter’s film needed some tinkering. In the 1978 film, Michale Myers is attacking Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) when Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance) bursts in and shoots Michael several times. Michael falls out a window and off a balcony, and appears to be dead. Yet moments later, when Loomis looks down at the lawn, Michael has vanished – he’s still alive, and he’s still out there. This gave way to Halloween II, where Michael is still prowling around Haddonfield.
But the events of Halloween II don’t exist in the world of the 2018 film. Instead, Michael Myers is seen locked back up in Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, where he’s been for the last 40 years. The implication is that after Michael was shot by Loomis at the end of Halloween, he ended up re-captured and sent back to the asylum.
Worried that audiences wouldn’t understand what was happening, David Gordon Green had an elaborate plan to recreate the ending of the original Halloween, while also setting up his new film. “Even in the script going into production, we were going to re-film the end of the original film from a different perspective,” Green told Bloody Disgusting. Green then explained how the re-shot ending would play out:
To portray the younger Laurie Strode, Green planned to use a “blend of Jamie [Lee Curtis] and a body double similar to 19-year-old Jamie,” while also employing a double for the late Donald Pleasance. “We cast a Loomis double who was our art director because we didn’t want to bring one in,” Green said. “He looked exactly like him.’
While this could have worked out, there’s also a chance it might have backfired considerably. And then there was the issue of cost. “There was conversation of utilizing footage from the original film and digitally altering it so we got some other interesting elements,” Green said. “All this stuff starts to cost money and when you look at what we’re trying to do, do you need the gimmick? Do you need the exposition? Do you need the setup?”
In the end, it was John Carpenter himself who convinced Green to axe the entire ending reshoot idea. Green told Carpenter: “Nobody’s going to know what’s happening and where we’re coming from.” To which Carpenter wisely replied: “Just trust ‘em and leave ‘em alone and let ‘em figure it out.” In conclusion: John Carpenter is a smart guy, and everyone should listen to him.
Halloween opens on October 19, 2018.
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