Everything We Know So Far About ‘Halloween Kills’
Halloween Kills is the 12th film in the Halloween movie franchise, a direct sequel to the 2018 box office blockbuster Halloween, which itself is a “requel” to John Carpenter’s original 1978 Halloween, cutting a new path from the events in the first film and disregarding the other nine films that were released between 1978 and 2018.
In this new timeline, Michael Myers is not the brother of Laurie Strode, played once again by Jamie Lee Curtis. Halloween Kills will mark her sixth on screen appearance as Laurie Strode.
Halloween 2018 director David Gordon Green returns to direct the sequel, from a script he co-wrote with Danny McBride and Scott Teems.
The plot of Halloween Kills is unknown, but we do have some clues, thanks to photos posted on social media from the set, during production in Wilmington, North Carolina in the fall of 2019. I have also talked to sources who were on the set during filming, and who were in attendance at the test screening that took place in Los Angeles in January. Taking all of that into consideration, and understanding that much could still change from what was filmed and what was shown in the test screening, here is everything we know so far.
By all accounts, flashback scenes taking place on Halloween night 1978 were filmed. We know this from various casting call announcements for extras, photos that have surfaced from the set, and the behind the scenes teaser video that was released on Oct. 31, 2019, which appears to show a young Lonnie Elam.
Speaking of Lonnie, he was mentioned in Halloween 2018, and David Gordon Green’s recent Twitter watch party for the film seemed to suggest that Lonnie’s peyote past with Ray (played by Toby Huss) will come into play in some way. Lonnie’s son Cameron, is played by Dylan Arnold in the 2018 film, and also in Halloween Kills. It was announced in September 2019 that Robert Longstreet will portray Lonnie Elam in HK, taking over the role from Brent Le Page, who originated Lonnie as one of Tommy Doyle’s bullys in 1978.
According to IMDb, Tristian Eggerling will play young Lonnie during the flashback scenes.
But Lonnie is far from the only legacy character returning from the ’78 original to face off against Michael Myers again in Halloween Kills.
Kyle Richards reprises her role as Lindsey Wallace, which cost the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star a broken nose suffered during filming. Curtis has praised Kyle’s performance, and I know from my own 2013 interview with Richards that she has been ready and waiting for her return to Haddonfield for years.
Charles Cyphers is also back, reprising his role as Haddonfield Sheriff Leigh Brackett, whose daughter Annie was one of Myers’ victims in the babysitter murders of 1978. Cyphers last played Brackett in a brief cameo during the opening moments of the 1981 sequel Halloween II.
Nancy Stephens reprises her role as Marion Chambers, the nurse riding with Dr. Loomis to get Michael from Smith’s Grove Santarium in the beginning of the first Halloween movie. Nurse Marion would go on to play a more significant part in the events of 1981’s Halloween II, as it was Marion who first informed Loomis that Michael had a sister adopted by the Strode family. She played Marion a third time in the excellent opening sequence of the franchise’s first “requel”, 1998’s Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.
Anthony Michael Hall takes over the role of Tommy Doyle, originally played by Brian Andrews in Carpenter’s Halloween and later played by Paul Rudd in his film debut, the 1995 sequel Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers. The image of Hall in character from the teaser video shows him looking pissed off and armed with a baseball bat.
Additional Halloween 2018 cast members returning in Halloween Kills include Judy Greer as Laurie’s daughter Karen, Andi Matichak as Karen’s daughter Allyson, and James Jude Courtney once again as The Shape, sharing the role with the original ’78 Myers, Nick Castle, in a unique collaboration in which Castle performs Michael’s breathing and suits up for a cameo, while Courtney performs the majority of the stalking and slashing.
We also know that the couple costumed as a doctor and nurse seen briefly in the 2018 film, played by Michael Smallwood and Carmela McNeal, respectively, will be featured in what I’m hearing will be one of the new film’s most memorable scenes. Their characters’ names have been revealed to be Marcus and Vanessa, and during the Twitter watch party, Green debunked a rumor that they are the parents of Julian, played in 2018 by Jibrail Nantambu.
The 2018 cemetery caretaker, now known as Sondra, played by Diva Tyler, will also return in the sequel.
One of Green’s tweets during the watch party also seemed to suggest that Officer Hawkins, played by Will Patton in 2018, may have survived after Dr. Sartain attacked him. In any case, it is likely that we could meet a younger version of Hawkins during the 1978 flashback scenes.
Additional cast members listed on IMDb include Holli Saperstein as the mother of Oscar, who was played by Drew Scheid in the previous film, and Omar J. Dorsey, reprising his role from 2018 as Sheriff Barker.
Like the first sequel in 1981 did with the ’78 original, Halloween Kills will pickup moments after the end of the 2018 film and will continue to take place on that same Halloween night. The working production title of HK was “Mob Rules“, which is likely a good indication that certain members of the Haddonfield community will quickly fall into a mob mentality hellbent on ending Myers once they learn that he has come home and attacked again.
It was confirmed by David Gordon Green himself during the Twitter watch party that we will in revisit the Myers House in Halloween Kills., though it remains unclear if this will be during a flashback to 1978 or circa 2018.
We also know that we are returning to Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, thanks to numerous photos from the exterior of the set, with Cape Fear Community College transformed into the fictional hospital that was first featured Halloween II.
And everyone involved seems to confirm what HDN has already independently been hearing from inside sources, that Halloween Kills is going to be significantly more violent than its 2018 predecessor.
Executive producer John Carpenter is once again expected to perform the new film’s score, along with his bandmates Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies.
Based on characters created by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, Halloween Kills is produced by Malek Akkad, Jason Blum, and Bill Block, while Green, McBride, Carpenter, Curtis, Jeanette Volturno, Couper Samuelson, and Ryan Freimann are executive producers, with Ryan Turek overseeing the project for Blumhouse Productions.
A trailer would most likely have been released around the second week of June in conjunction with the originally scheduled opening of the new Candyman movie, but I believe the big holdup right now simply that Universal has not decided exactly how it plans to release Halloween Kills considering that movie theaters around the world remain closed at this moment (May 31, 2020) due to the pandemic. I’d be highly surprised if its released is delayed, especially after Universal has made it clear that they are all in on the PVOD (Premium Video On Demand) option.
Halloween Kills is currently scheduled to be released on October 16, 2020, from Blumhouse and Universal Pictures.
From what I had heard right before quarantine began, the tentative plan at that time was that the next film in the franchise, Halloween Ends, intended to be the finale of this current timeline of events, would be filmed in the fall through Halloween itself (as HK did last year), and it was possible even then that shooting could be pushed back as far as early 2021. That’s where it stood just prior the quarantine, according to my sources. So it remains unclear at this time when filming of Halloween Ends will begin, but it is scheduled to arrive in theaters on October 15, 2021.
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