Trivia / Halloween (2018)

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• Acting for Two: Jamie Lee Curtis revealed that, along with playing Laurie Strode, she also provided the voice of the crying baby during Michael's initial rampage.
• California Doubling: South Carolina serves as a stand-in for Illinois.
• Canon Discontinuity: The film ignores every sequel and remake in the franchise to date, making it a direct sequel to the 1978 original.
• Career Resurrection: The film's critical and financial success solidified Jamie Lee Curtis's comeback after nearly a decade of remaining off the radar. She later reprised her role as Laurie Strode in this film's sequels Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends. While those failed to nab the same level of success as this one, her roles in Knives Out and Everything Everywhere All at Once amped her profile further – with the latter winning her an Academy Award.
• Cast the Expert: North Charleston Police Department Detective Charlie Benton, who served as a creative consultant for the film, appears as Officer Andrews.
• Channel Hop: The franchise returns to Universal after they previously released the second and third films in 1981 and 1982. Dimension Films had released every entry since 1995, and they were working on a new sequel, but the franchise reverted back to Miramax in 2015 after they failed to put a movie into production. Blumhouse came on board to produce this film, and they have a longstanding deal with Universal.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Nick Castle plays 61-year-old Michael Myers, while he himself is 71. However, James Jude Courtney, Michael's actor for most of the film, was 61, Michael's exact age, during the time of filming.
  • The high school students included 24-year-old Andi Matchiak (Allyson), 24-year-old Dylan Arnold (Cameron), 23-year-old Virginia Gardner (Vicki), and 26-year-old Miles Robbins (Dave).
  • Jamie Lee Curtis is three years older than Laurie's age in the film. This coincidentally matches the first film as well, where she was twenty playing seventeen.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Sophia Miller, who plays the younger version of Karen, cut thirteen inches of her hair. She then donated it to charity.
• Follow the Leader: The success of this film and its sequels led to a number of old horror movie franchises getting new sequels that involve bringing back an old protagonist, usually with the original actor reprising their role (e.g. Scream (2022), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022), and The Exorcist: Believer).
• In Memoriam: This Movie is dedicated to the memory of Moustapha Akkad, the original producer of the Halloween series who was sadly killed in a terrorist attack in 2005.
• Irony as She Is Cast:
  • Oddly enough, Nick Castle’s return to the role of Michael Myers is this. In the 1978 film, Castle portrayed the masked version of Myers, while Tony Moran portrayed him in the brief scene of his unmasking. In the 2018 film, Castle is now the one portraying the masked Myers in only one scene (the gunshot to the mirror) due to his age, meanwhile, the younger stuntman, James Jude Courtney handles the scenes where Michael’s face is uncovered along with most other sequences.
  • Jamie Lee Curtis, a supporter of gun control, here plays a heroic Gun Nut. She actually acknowledged this during production, insisting that Laurie not use any guns that she believes should be heavily restricted in real life, hence why Laurie's Wall of Weapons has no semi-automatic rifles or pistols on it.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • October 19 is Michael's canonical birthday. It is also six days shy of the 40th anniversary of the first film's theatrical release.
  • The movie was released in Italy on October 25, the 40th anniversary of the original's American theatrical release.
• Milestone Celebration: This movie is used to commemorate the franchise's 40th anniversary.
• Missing Trailer Scene: The trailer shows Laurie trying to stab Michael outside at night during a final confrontation, which doesn't appear in the final cut. Likewise, the scene of Michael emerging from behind the doorway as Hawkins is distracted is gone, as well as Dana seeing Michael's mask (implied to be Aaron messing about) in the shower. Word of God has stated that an estimated 30 minutes of footage was cut for time, which could of course still turn up in home releases.invoked
• The Original Darrin: While James Jude Courtney does most of the scenes as Michael, Nick Castle does some as well, making it the first film since the original in which he plays Michael.
• The Other Darrin: Dr Loomis is voiced by soundalike actor Colin Mahon, due to Donald Pleasence's death in February 1995. He had previously been voiced by Tom Kane in H20.
• Playing Against Type: Let's be honest, no one expected Danny McBride or David Gordon Green to make a horror movie. When asked about this, the former responded "there's more to life than dick and fart jokes."
• Playing with Character Type: Judy Greer spends the first portion of the film in a passive mother role - which mirrors her typecasting in blockbusters such as Ant-Man, Jurassic World, Tomorrowland etc. However she then has to put her survival training to good use and become an Action Mom - even helping trap Michael with a Wounded Gazelle Gambit.
• Real-Life Relative: Producer Malek Akkad is the son of Moustapha Akkad, who produced the original franchise. Malek was even on the set of the first film at age 7.
• Refitted for Sequel: Jamie Lee Curtis had wanted Laurie's life to be in complete shambles for Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later - but this was lessened by Kevin Williamson (who felt she should have "more to lose"). This characterization is used here - where Laurie is a recluse who is estranged from her family, was a borderline abusive mother to her own daughter and secretly wants Michael to escape so she can get revenge.
• Remake Cameo: Allyson's offscreen English teacher who talks about fate is voiced by PJ Soles, who starred as Lynda in the original 1978 film.
• Role Reprise: Jamie Lee Curtis and Nick Castle return to the roles they made famous, albeit to a much lesser degree in the latter case; Castle only provides Michael's breathing sounds and plays the masked Michael the moment Laurie sees him for the first time in 40 years from outside in an upstairs mirror.
• Sequel Gap: On this continuity, a whopping forty years after its predecessor.
• Tom Hanks Syndrome: Starting in the 2000s and right through to the 2010s, Jamie Lee Curtis had been better known for comedies and lampooning her horror roots in Scream Queens (2015). This saw her returning to drama.
• What Could Have Been:
  • An early idea was for the film to be standalone, set in 1988, ten years after Michael Myers's rampage. This version of Michael would be on death row, but escape his execution due to a badly timed power surge, and thus terrorise a new set of victims.
  • According to interviews with director David Gordon Green and the producers, the original opening scene that was scripted for the film would involve a flashback/Rewrite of the original film's ending, and would have shown Michael killing Dr. Loomis prior to being sent back to Smith's Grove Sanitarium. The scene would have also used body doubles and CGI (with one of the production assistants acting as a body double for Loomis and a CGI'd young Laurie Strode, plus an actor playing a younger version of Hawkins) to show Michael getting caught by the police. Eventually, John Carpenter utilized an Executive Veto and kiboshed the idea, arguing that it made the opening too complicated. A variant of this would later be used in the opening scene of the sequel, albeit with Dr. Loomis being spared and even almost killing Michael rather than vice-versa.
  • Danielle Harris (who played Laurie's daughter Jamie Lloyd in the fourth and fifth films, and Annie Brackett in both Rob Zombie films) confirmed that she was in contact with the producers about a possible role in the film, but they weren't interested.
  • Kyle Richards (who played Lindsay Wallace in the original film, and has since gone on to star in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) was also interested in returning to the franchise, but the producers couldn't find a way to fit her into the story. She would ultimately reprise her role of Lindsay in the next film.
  • Emma Roberts expressed interest in playing Allyson, but the producers wanted to cast an unknown actress, much like Jamie Lee Curtis was in the original film.^note Though Curtis wasn't much of an unknown, considering her parents were Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. She was in fact cast for that reason.
  • According to an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis, the script sent to her had another different opening scene - a tracking scene which showed Allyson running around her Haddonfield neighborhood before heading back home and opening her closet.
  • The original script had Laurie and Michael's final confrontation as a knife fight outside rather than a duel inside her house, bits of which were included in the trailers. Laurie would be mortally wounded by Michael, who would then be shot by Karen (named Shanah in this draft). The film would end with a Bolivian Army Ending for both of them, as Shanah and Allyson rushed Laurie to the hospital, and Michael would collapse in Laurie's garden of target mannequins, bleeding heavily.
  • The film was planned as two entries filmed back to back, but they decided to just film one and see how it went from there. A post credits scene has Michael's breathing being heard and he can't be seen in the burning house, implying that he survived. As of the film's critical and commercial success, a sequel was thought to be very likely, an assumption which is now confirmed true; on July 19, 2019, it was announced that not one, but two sequels are in the works. The first, Halloween Kills, released on October 15, 2021, and the second, Halloween Ends, released on October 14, 2022.^* Previously scheduled for 2020 and 2021, respectively, but both were delayed as a result of the COVID-19 Pandemic.

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