A Halloween TV Series is Coming

Television

Remember Halloween Ends, the movie they said would definitively end the Michael Myers story? Well, if anyone bought that line, they’re in for a shock, because a Halloween TV series is on its way. In an interview with Deadline, Marc Helwig, Head of Worldwide Television at Miramax, talked about a few shows the company has in various stages of production, one of which is Halloween. It’s still very early in the show’s development – a creative team hasn’t even been hired yet – but Helwig has a few tidbits about what the series will be like:

“The foundation of it is the original film, the John Carpenter movie, the characters of that film, and perhaps a group of characters that we haven’t really focused on that much in recent film versions or even in a number of them… It’s a creative reset completely and going back to the original film, as opposed to spinning out of any of the more recent film adaptations.”

And in case you had any doubts, Deadline confirms that the Halloween TV series is “envisioned to potentially launch a cinematic universe spanning film and television,” as opposed to the Halloween movies, which were a model of restraint. I know it hardly matters anymore, but are even hardcore Halloween fans tired of this yet? How much blood can they suck from Michael Myers’ unkillable corpse? They did a direct sequel to Halloween, a bunch that jettisoned Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode, brought Laurie Strode back, killed Laurie Strode and replaced her with Busta Rhymes, rebooted with a new Laurie Strode and Sabretooth, and un-rebooted with a new reboot that reboots everything but the first Halloween. Now, they’re going to TV in what seems like a similar almost-complete reboot that probably won’t have Jamie Lee Curtis and/or Laurie Strode. I’m not a big enough Halloween enthusiast to have a passionate opinion, but it looks so cheap and diminishing to me. How many times can you reboot? I know people love a lot of the sequels – I have friends who are massive fans – but those films were tossed out the window twice and are about to be for a third time. At some point, doesn’t it start to feel like the multiverse, where there are a million versions of the same thing, so none of them matter much anymore? It’s getting easier to forget how great the original Halloween was. But we’re at a point where they’re remaking The Naked Gun, of all things, so there’s no chance they’ll finally let Michael Myers rest.