Halloween cancelled for 2016

Halloween cancelled for 2016


A year ago the news broke that Marcus Dunstan, director of the Collector films and co-writer of various Saws, Feasts and Piranhas, would be marshalling Michael Myers for the delayed next film in the Halloween franchise. Though he talked a good talk, that wasn't ultimately to be. The Weinsteins' Dimension films, long the home of Halloween for the last two decades, has lost the rights, leaving the slasher franchise in limbo.

Not much was officially known about the now-stymied 11th Halloween's plot or angle, other than that it had been planned as a "recalibration" following Rob Zombie's unloved instalments. A synopsis of unclear origin was out there in the inter-ether, involving two now grown-up children of Michael Myers' victims sneaking into death row to watch the masked killer's execution, but finding themselves in hot water when everything goes awry and Myers, of course, escapes. Whether that story will ever seen the light of day now remains unclear.

Halloween's rights are now with Dimension's parent company Miramax, and are being shopped around to other studios. BD speculate that, with the current vogue for shared movie universes, Halloween ending up at a studio who could pit him against other iconic horror villains is a no-brainer. Warner Bros. currently control Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, while Leatherface is off at Lionsgate.

Others have mused that the way to reboot Halloween is to ditch Michael Myers altogether and follow the anthology-series route attempted in Halloween III: Season Of The Witch. We know which of those two scenarios we think is the most likely...

Either way, there'll be no Halloween in 2016, kids. But Leatherface - the latest Texas Chainsaw Massacre directed by Inside's Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury - is currently in post-production and should show up this year.