Halloween (franchise)
Halloween is an American horror franchise that consists of eleven films, as well as novels, comic books, merchandise, and a video game. The films primarily focuses on serial killer Michael Myers who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his sister, Judith Myers. Fifteen years later, he escapes to stalk and kill the people of the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. Michael's killings occur on the holiday of Halloween, on which all of the films primarily take place. The original Halloween, released in 1978, was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill, and directed by Carpenter. The film is known to have inspired a long line of slasher films.
Eight sequels have since followed. Michael Myers is the antagonist in all of the films except , the story of which has no direct connection to any other film in the series. In 2007, writer-director Rob Zombie made a remake of the 1978 film. A sequel to the 2007 remake was released two years later. A direct sequel to the original film that ignores all sequels was released in 2018. In July 2019, it was announced that two sequels would follow the 2018 film, titled Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends, and are scheduled for release in 2021 and 2022 respectively.
The films collectively grossed over $640 million at the box office worldwide. The film series is ranked first at the United States box office—in adjusted 2018 dollars—when compared to other American horror series. Both the original film and the 2018 sequel have received critical acclaim, while the other films have received mixed or negative reviews from both fans and critics.
Films
Overview
The original Halloween, co-written and directed by John Carpenter, tells the story of Michael Myers as he stalks and kills teenage babysitters on Halloween night. The film begins with six-year-old Michael killing his older sister Judith on Halloween night 1963 in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois. He is subsequently hospitalized at Warren County's Smith's Grove Sanitarium. Fifteen years later, Michael escapes from Smith's Grove and returns to his hometown while being pursued by his psychiatrist, Dr. Sam Loomis. Michael stalks high school student Laurie Strode and her friends as they babysit. Murdering Laurie's friends, Michael finally attacks Laurie herself, but she manages to fend him off long enough for Loomis to save her. Loomis shoots Michael off a balcony, but when Loomis goes to check Michael's body, he finds it missing. Halloween II picks up where the events of Halloween left off. Michael follows Laurie to the local hospital, killing everyone who gets between him and Laurie. The story reveals that Laurie is actually Michael's sister: she was given up for adoption as an infant. After Michael chases Laurie throughout the hospital and narrowly escaping him in the parking lot, Michael corners Loomis and Laurie in an operating room, where Loomis causes an explosion as Laurie escapes. Michael, engulfed in flames, stumbles out of the room before finally falling dead.Michael Myers does not appear in '. This installment follows the story of Dr. Challis as he tries to solve the mysterious murder of a patient in his hospital. He, along with the patient's daughter Ellie, travels to the small town of Santa Mira, California. The pair discover that Silver Shamrock Novelties, a company run by Conal Cochran, is attempting to use the mystic powers of the Stonehenge rocks to resurrect the ancient aspects of the Celtic festival, Samhain, which Cochran connects to witchcraft. Cochran is using his Silver Shamrock Halloween masks to achieve his goal, which will be achieved when all the children wearing his masks watch the Silver Shamrock commercial airing Halloween night. Challis contacts the television stations and convinces all but one of the station managers to remove the commercial. The film ends with Challis screaming for the final station to turn off the commercial.
', as the title suggests, features the return of Michael Myers to the film series. It is revealed that Michael has been in a comatose state for ten years since the explosion in Halloween II. While being transferred back to Smith's Grove, Michael awakens upon hearing that Laurie Strode, who died in a car accident, has a daughter, Jamie Lloyd. Michael escapes and makes his way to Haddonfield in search of his niece Jamie. Dr. Loomis goes to Haddonfield after learning that Michael has escaped transfer. Eventually, the police track Michael down and shoot him several times before he falls down a mine shaft. Picking up directly where the previous film ends, ' has Michael surviving the gunshots, and the fall down the mine; he stumbles upon a hermit who bandages him up. One year later, and showing signs of a metaphysical connection to Jamie, Michael tracks Jamie to a local child mental health clinic. Using Jamie as bait, Loomis manages to capture Michael. The film ends with Michael being taken into police custody, only to be broken out of jail by a mysterious stranger, all dressed in black. ' picks up the story six years after the events of The Revenge of Michael Myers. The mysterious stranger who broke Michael out of jail kidnaps Jamie Lloyd in an effort to obtain her child. Jamie escapes with her newborn son, with Michael in pursuit. Michael kills Jamie and continues searching for her baby; the infant is found by Tommy Doyle —the young boy who was babysat by Laurie Strode in the first film—who brings it home for safety. It is revealed that Michael is driven by the Curse of Thorn, which forces a person to kill their entire family in order to save all of civilization. The mysterious stranger is revealed to be Dr. Loomis's colleague, Dr. Wynn, who is part of a group of people who protect the chosen individual so that they may complete their task. With the help of Kara Strode, Laurie's adoptive cousin, Tommy keeps the infant from Michael, who slaughters Wynn and his followers. Michael is finally subdued by Tommy, who injects him with large quantities of tranquilizers inside the Smith's Grove Sanitarium. The film ends with Michael's mask lying on the floor of the lab room and Loomis screaming in the background, leaving the fate of both men unknown.
The events that transpire between the fourth to sixth films are effectively ignored in '. This film opens twenty years after the events of the first two films and establishes that Michael Myers has been missing since the explosion in 1978. Laurie Strode has faked her own death so that she could go into hiding from her brother Michael. Now working as the head mistress of a private school under the name Keri Tate, Laurie continues to live in fear of her brother's return. Her own son, John, attends school where she teaches. Laurie's fear becomes reality when Michael shows up at the school and begins killing John's friends. Laurie manages to get John and his girlfriend to safety, but decides to face Michael once and for all. Laurie decapitates Michael, finally killing him. ' picks up three years after H20, and reveals that Michael swapped clothes with a paramedic—crushing the paramedic's larynx so that he could not talk—and that was whom Laurie killed. Laurie is committed to a mental institution, where Michael shows up. Michael kills Laurie and travels back to his family home in Haddonfield, but finds a group of college students filming an Internet reality show. Michael proceeds to kill everyone, until he is finally electrocuted by the only surviving student, Sara Moyer, and the show's creator Freddie Harris. Michael's body and the bodies of his victims are then taken to the morgue. As the medical examiner begins to inspect Michael's body, he awakens.
A remake of the original Halloween focuses on the events that led Michael Myers to kill his family. It also identifies Laurie as Michael's sister early on, which was something not done in the original 1978 film. On Halloween, Michael murders a school bully, his older sister and her boyfriend, as well as his mother's boyfriend. Committed to Smith's Grove Sanitarium, Michael closes himself off from everyone. Michael's mother commits suicide out of guilt. Fifteen years later, Michael escapes and heads to Haddonfield to find his younger sister, with his psychiatrist Dr. Loomis in pursuit. Michael finds his sister living with the Strode family, and going by the name Laurie. After killing nearly all of her friends and family, Michael then kidnaps Laurie and attempts to explain to her that he is her brother through the use of a picture that he has kept of himself and her as an infant. Unable to understand, Laurie fights back; eventually, Laurie uses Loomis's gun to shoot Michael in the head. Laurie screams in horror as the credits roll. A sequel to the remake picks up right where the latter leaves off and then jumps ahead one year. Here, Michael is presumed dead, but resurfaces after a vision of his deceased mother Deborah informs him that he must track Laurie down so that they can "come home" together. In the film, Michael and Laurie have a mental link, with the two sharing visions of their mother. During the film's climax, Laurie kills Michael by stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and face with his own knife, with the final scene suggesting that she has taken on her brother's psychosis as she dons his mask and is committed to an asylum, hallucinating her mother walking with a white horse.
Halloween is a direct sequel to the original film that disregards Michael as the brother of Laurie Strode, establishing that Michael was arrested following his killing spree in 1978, spending forty years back in Smith's Grove Sanitarium before escaping again and returning to Haddonfield for another killing spree. Here he comes face-to-face again with Laurie Strode, who has been preparing for his return. Michael is taken to Laurie's home by his deranged psychologist, where he engages in a showdown with Laurie, who ultimately traps him in her burning house with the help of her daughter Karen, and her granddaughter Allyson.
Development
After viewing John Carpenter's film Assault on Precinct 13 at the Milan Film Festival, independent film producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad sought out Carpenter to direct for them a film about a psychotic killer stalking babysitters. Carpenter and Debra Hill began drafting a story titled The Babysitter Murders, but the title was changed at Yablans' request, suggesting the setting be changed to Halloween night, and naming it Halloween instead. Moustapha Akkad fronted the $300,000 for the film's budget, even though he was worried about the tight schedule, low budget, and Carpenter's limited experience as a filmmaker. He finally decided to finance the film after Carpenter relayed the entire film to Akkad, "in a suspenseful way, almost frame for frame", and opted not to take any fees for directing the film. The low budget forced wardrobe and props to be crafted from items on hand or that could be purchased inexpensively, this included the trademark mask worn by Michael Myers throughout the film. Production designer, art director, location scout and co-editor Tommy Lee Wallace created Michael's mask from a William Shatner Halloween mask, purchased for $1.98. The limited budget also dictated the filming location and time schedule. Halloween was filmed in 21 days in the spring of 1978 primarily in South Pasadena, California. An abandoned house owned by a church stood in as the Myers house. Two homes on Orange Grove Avenue in Hollywood were used for the film's climax.| We investigated a number of 3-D processes... but they were far too expensive for this particular project. Also, most of the projects we do involve a lot of night shooting – evil lurks at night. It's hard to do that in 3-D. |
| — Debra Hill on putting Halloween II into 3-D. |
Following the success of Halloween, Yablans and Akkad began working on Halloween II. There was initial discussion about filming Halloween II in 3-D, but the idea never came to fruition. After Halloween II was released, Carpenter and Hill were approached about creating a third Halloween film, but they were reluctant to pledge commitment. The pair agreed to participate in the new project only if it was not a direct sequel to Halloween II, which meant no Michael Myers. Most of the filming for Halloween III took place on location in the small coastal town of Loleta in Humboldt County, California. Familiar Foods, a milk bottling plant in Loleta, served as the Silver Shamrock Novelties factory, but all special effects involving fire, smoke, and explosions were filmed at Post Studios.
After Halloween III was released, Michael Myers was brought back with 1988's The Return of Michael Myers, where he has stayed for the remainder of the series. Four more sequels would follow, between 1988 and 2002, before the series would take a break for five years. On June 4, 2006, Dimension Films announced that Rob Zombie, director of House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects, would be creating the next Halloween film. Bob Weinstein approached Rob Zombie about making the film, and Zombie, who was a fan of the original Halloween and friend of John Carpenter, jumped at the chance to make a Halloween film for Dimension Films. Before Dimension went public with the news, Zombie felt obligated to inform John Carpenter, out of respect, of the plans to remake his film. Carpenter's request was for Zombie to "make it his own ". Zombie's film would combine the elements of prequel and remake with the original concept, with considerable original content in the new film. Zombie also wanted to reinvent the character, as he felt Michael, along with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and Pinhead, had become too familiar to audiences, and as a result, less scary. Zombie delved deeper into Michael Myers's mythology. Michael's mask was even given its own story to provide an explanation as to why he wears it, instead of having the character simply steal a random mask from a hardware store, as in the original film. Zombie wanted to bring Michael closer to what a psychopath really is, and wanted the mask to be a way for Michael to hide.
In 2008, a sequel to the 2007 remake was announced, with French filmmakers Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo in negotiations to direct. Instead, Zombie was resigned to write and direct the sequel, with the film taking place directly after the end of his remake. In an interview, Zombie expressed how the exhaustion of creating the first Halloween made him not want to come back for a sequel, but after a year of cooling down he was more open to the idea. The writer/director explains that with the sequel, he was no longer bound by a sense of needing to retain any "John Carpenter-ness", as he could now do "whatever wants to do". Instead of focusing on Michael, Zombie chose to look more at the psychological consequences on Laurie after the events of the remake. As Zombie explains, after Michael murdered her friends and family, Laurie became a "wreck", who continually sinks lower as the film moves forward. Rob Zombie declined to return to film the second sequel to the 2007 remake. The second sequel, Halloween 3D, was cancelled in 2012.
A new effort to make a Halloween film, Halloween Returns, was attempted in 2015, unrelated to the Rob Zombie films. This ultimately failed, and was cancelled when Dimension Films lost the filming rights to Halloween. On May 23, 2016, it was reported that Miramax and Blumhouse Productions were developing a new film, which they would co-finance. On February 9, 2017, John Carpenter announced that a new Halloween film was going to be written by David Gordon Green and Danny McBride and will be directed by Green. The film will be a direct sequel to the original Halloween, and will ignore all of the previous sequels. In September 2017, Jamie Lee Curtis confirmed that she would reprise her role as Laurie Strode. In October 2017, Judy Greer entered negotiations to play Laurie's daughter Karen Strode. In December 2017, it was announced Andi Matichak had signed on to play Karen Strode's daughter and Laurie's granddaughter. The film will be distributed by Universal Pictures, their first involvement in the franchise since distributing 1982's . On October 17, 2017, Carpenter announced that he would be returning to score the upcoming film, saying, "I'll be consulting with the director to see what he feels. I could create a new score, we could update the old score and amplify it, or we could combine those two things. I'll have to see the movie to see what it requires." On December 20, 2017, it was announced that Nick Castle would be reprising his role as Michael Myers. Filming began on January 13, 2018, concluding on February 19, 2018. The film was released on October 19, 2018.
In June 2019, it was reported that a sequel would begin filming in September 2019, with Green returning to write the script and direct and Curtis, Greer, and Matichak reprising their roles from the 2018 film. In July 2019, the titles and release dates of two sequels were announced: Halloween Kills, set to be released on October 16, 2020, and Halloween Ends, set to be released on October 15, 2021. Green will direct both films and co-write the scripts with McBride, and Curtis will reprise her role in both films. Teems was confirmed as a co-writer for Halloween Kills, while Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier were announced to co-write Halloween Ends. However, due to the concerns of the COVID-19 pandemic, both films were delayed by a year, with Halloween Kills scheduled to be released on October 15, 2021 and Halloween Ends on October 14, 2022.
Music
John Carpenter composed the music to the first three films. For Halloween, Carpenter chose to use a piano melody played in a 5/4 time rhythm instead of a symphonic soundtrack. Critic James Berardinelli calls the score "relatively simple and unsophisticated", but admits that "HalloweenThe score for Halloween II is a variation of John Carpenter's compositions from the first film, particularly the main theme's familiar piano melody played. The score was performed on a synthesizer organ rather than the piano used for Halloween. One reviewer for the BBC described the revised score as having "a more Gothic feel". The reviewer asserted that it "doesn't sound quite as good as the original piece", but "it still remains a classic piece of music".
Music remained an important element in establishing the atmosphere of Halloween III. Just as in Halloween and Halloween II, there was no symphonic score. Much of the music was composed to solicit "false startles" from the audience. The soundtrack was composed by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, who had also worked on the score for Halloween II. The score of Halloween III differed greatly from the familiar main theme of the original and its first sequel. Carpenter replaced the familiar piano melody with a slower, electronic theme played on a synthesizer with beeping tonalities. Howarth explains how he and Carpenter composed the music for the third film:
The music style of John Carpenter and myself has further evolved in this film soundtrack by working exclusively with synthesizers to produce our music. This has led to a certain procedural routine. The film is first transferred to a time coded video tape and synchronized to a 24 track master audio recorder; then while watching the film we compose the music to these visual images. The entire process goes quite rapidly and has 'instant gratification', allowing us to evaluate the score in synch to the picture. This is quite an invaluable asset.
Following Carpenter's departure from the series, Howarth would stay on board as the sole composer for the next two sequels, and also acted as the lead composer on Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, with Paul Rabjohns providing additional music when the initial edit of the film was substantially re-filmed. While Halloween H20 credits John Ottman as its sole composer, in reality most of the soundtrack was provided by Scream composer Marco Beltrami, using a mixture of music from that film and a few original cues written by Beltrami, after the producers disliked Ottman's score. Danny Lux provided the soundtrack for Halloween: Resurrection, while Tyler Bates composed the soundtracks for both the 2007 Halloween reboot and its 2009 sequel.
Box office
The Halloween series, when compared to the other top-grossing American horror series—A Nightmare on Elm Street, Child's Play, Friday the 13th, the Hannibal Lecter series, Psycho, Saw, Scream, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre—and adjusting for 2018 inflation is the highest-grossing horror series in the United States at approximately $761.3 million. Next in line is Friday the 13th at $755.6 million, followed by the Nightmare on Elm Street series with $730.3 million. The Hannibal Lecter film series closely follows in third with $727.6 million. The Saw series with $580.9 million, Scream with $586.9 million, Psycho with $554.4 million, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with $391 million, and the Child's Play film series rounding out the list with $249.6 million.Documentary
Halloween: 25 Years of Terror is a DVD released on July 25, 2006, featuring a documentary on the Halloween films, narrated by P. J. Soles and featuring interviews from many of the cast members as well as filmmakers of the Halloween films and a lot of footage from the series as well. It has panel discussions with members from the casts and crews of most of the Halloween films, plus other celebrities and filmmakers such as Rob Zombie and Clive Barker as well as film critics. All of the panel discussions took place at a 25th anniversary convention in Pasadena, California in October 2003. It also has extended versions of interviews featured in the documentary and much more. In 2010, The Biography Channel produced a television special titled Halloween: The Inside Story, which premiered on October 28, 2010.Literature
Novels
When the original Halloween was released in 1978, a novelization of the film followed just a year later. Written by Curtis Richards, the book follows the events of the film, but expands on the festival of Samhain and Michael's time at Smith's Grove Sanitarium. Halloween II, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and Halloween 4 each received novelizations as well. Jack Martin would write Halloween II, which was released alongside its film counterpart. Martin included an additional victim of Michael's in this novel. Halloween IV, released in October 1988 and written by Nicholas Grabowsky, also followed the events of the film in which it was adapted from. A novelization of the 2018 film by John Passarella was released on October 23, 2018.Over a four-month period, Berkley Books published three young adult novels written by Kelly O'Rourke. The novels are original stories created by O'Rourke, with no direct continuity with the films. The first, released on October 1, 1997, titled The Scream Factory, follows a group of friends who set up a haunted house attraction in the basement of Haddonfield City Hall, only to be stalked and killed by Michael Myers while they are there. The Old Myers Place is the second novel, released December 1, 1997, and focuses on Mary White, who moves into the Myers house with her family. Michael returns home and begins stalking and attacking Mary and her friends. O'Rourke's final novel, The Mad House, was released on February 1, 1998. The Mad House features a young girl, Christine Ray, who joins a documentary film crew that travels to haunted locations, and they are headed to Smith's Grove Sanitarium, where they are confronted by Michael.
Comic books
The first Halloween comic was published by Brian Pulido's Chaos! Comics. Simply titled Halloween, it was intended to be a one-issue special, but eventually two sequels spawned: Halloween II: The Blackest Eyes and Halloween III: The Devil's Eyes. All of the stories were written by Phil Nutman, with Daniel Farrands—writer for Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers—assisting on the first issue, and David Brewer and Justiniano worked on the illustrations. Tommy Doyle is the main protagonist in each of the issues, focusing on his attempts to kill Michael Myers. The first issue includes back story on Michael's childhood, while the third picks up after the events of the film Halloween H20. These comics were based on Daniel Farrand's concept for Halloween: Resurrection. He had been approached by the producers to pitch a follow-up to Halloween H20. His idea was to have Tommy Doyle incarcerated at Smith's Grove for Michael Myers' crimes, only to escape and reunite with Lindsay Wallace. Together, they study the journals of Dr. Loomis and find out more about Michael's childhood. The movie would have explored Michael's time at Smith's Grove and his relationship with Dr. Loomis, before returning to Tommy and Lindsay, who are attacked by the adult Michael Myers. Upon defeating him and removing his mask, they discover Laurie Strode, who has taken over her brother's mantle. Farrand's logic was that, since Jamie Lee Curtis was contracted to cameo in Halloween: Resurrection, they should make that cameo as significant and surprising as possible. Although the studio did not follow up on his pitch, Farrands was able to tell his story in comic book form.One Good Scare written by Stefan Hutchinson, and illustrated by Peter Fielding, was released in 2003. The main character in this comic is Lindsey Wallace, the young girl who first saw Michael Myers alongside Tommy Doyle in the original 1978 film. Hutchinson wanted to bring the character back to his roots, and away from the "lumbering Jason-clone" the film sequels had made him. One Good Scare came about because Hutchinson wanted to produce a comic book to celebrate the series' twenty-fifth anniversary, to be sold as a collectible at a Halloween convention in South Pasadena. Due to the positive reception to One Good Scare, Hutchinson hoped to use the comic as a "demo" for getting a distribution deal, but was unable to do so, due to rights issues.
While waiting to acquire the rights to publish more Halloween comics, Stefan Hutchinson worked on the documentary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror with Malek Akkad. Together, they developed ideas for possible Halloween stories that would be "connected into a larger tale, so the idea was that it would use the serial aspect of comic books to create different storylines than would be possible in the films." On July 25, 2006, as an insert inside the DVD release of Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Hutchinson released Halloween: Autopsis. Written by Hutchinson, and artwork by Marcus Smith and Nick Dismas, the story is about a photographer assigned to take pictures of Michael Myers. As the photographer, Carter, follows Dr. Loomis he begins to take on Loomis's obsession himself, until finally meeting Michael Myers in person, which results in his death.
| "A lot of readers found in the comic books what they had been missing from the films in the later sequels. Our books are very faithful to the source material, and by that we mean the original film itself. In our stories, Michael Myers is very much again "The Shape" — the undefined bogeyman of 1978, rather than the family killer of the 80s and 90s." |
| — Stefan Hutchinson on the fan support of his Halloween comic book series. |
Rob Zombie's reboot of the film series ensured that any Halloween comics would not be contradicted by upcoming films, allowing Hutchinson creative freedom. Malek Akkad was approached by Devil's Due Publishing with the possibility of producing a line of Halloween comics, and he and Hutchinson worked to make them a reality. Hutchinson was convinced by the strong support of One Good Scare that the comic books would have an audience. In 2008, Stefan Hutchinson released the first issue of his new comic book, Halloween: Nightdance. This is a four-issue miniseries, and it does not contain any characters—other than Michael—from the films. The four issues are titled, "A Shape in the Void", "The Silent Clown", "A Rainbow in One Color", and "When the Stars Came Crashing Down". The first issue, "A Shape in the Void", takes place on October 31, 2000, so that it falls between Halloween H20 and Halloween: Resurrection. Issue one follows Michael as he stalks Lisa, an eighteen-year-old girl with insecurities and "a chronic fear of darkness". Hutchinson explains that Nightdance was an attempt to escape the dense continuity of the film series and recreate the tone of the 1978 film. Michael becomes inexplicably fixated on Lisa, just as he did with Laurie in the original Halloween, before the sequels established that a sibling bond was actually his motivation for stalking her. The aim was to once again establish Michael Myers as a "credible and dangerous force".
August 2008 saw the release of Devil's Due's Halloween: 30 Years of Terror to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Halloween. This comic book one-shot is a collection of short stories inspired by John Carpenter's original. "Trick or Treat" features the MacKenzies, unseen characters from the first film who Tommy and Lindsey run to for help. "P.O.V." shows a murder from the point of view of both Michael and his victim, "Visiting Hours" sees Laurie Strode reflecting on how her life could have been had her brother never found her in 1978, while "Tommy and the Boogeyman" reveals that Tommy Doyle grew up to write comic books featuring Michael Myers. In the final story, "Repetition Compulsion", Dr. Loomis tries to predict where Michael will strike next on Halloween 1989. Writer Hutchinson explains that H30 came about because, unlike previous decades, there was no Halloween film coming out in 2008 to acknowledge the occasion.
Devil's Due released the three-issue miniseries Halloween: The First Death of Laurie Strode in late 2008. Written by Hutchinson with artwork from Jeff Zornow, the story bridges the gap between Halloween II and Halloween H20 by focusing on Laurie Strode in the aftermath of the 1978 murders. Hutchinson explains that Laurie is "trying to get better and trying to repair, but where do you even start after going through such horror? How do you even try to resume normality when you don't know what that is anymore?" Although Michael appears in the series, it is not clear whether he is real or if the traumatised Laurie is seeing things. Hutchinson is not a fan of the revelation that Laurie and Michael are siblings and took steps to address that problem in the story. He wanted to avoid the "bloodline plot of the middle sequels", which he felt demystified the character of the Shape, and approach the story so that "it becomes almost incidental that she's his sister". Hutchinson believed that Laurie Strode's evolution into Keri Tate was fertile ground for a storyline; he says, "it's not the faking of the death that's interesting at all, but it's the fall that leads to that happening. The faked death is just simple mechanics and can be covered in a sentence, but the state of mind and events leading to that are full of rich character and dramatic potential."
Online stories
All of Stefan Hutchinson's Halloween comic books take place in the Halloween H20 timeline, which retconned Halloween 4–6 from continuity. Hutchinson comments that, while the retcon was unpopular with "a lot of fans" for ignoring previous movies, he preferred the "simplicity of this storyline, over the needlessly convoluted mythology that the last three films had created". However, he admits that one of the downsides of the H20 timeline is that fans do not know exactly what happened to Dr. Sam Loomis after Halloween II. To remedy this, Hutchinson pitched Halloween: Sam as a way of paying tribute to the character. Written by Hutchinson and featuring illustrations from Autopsis Marcus Smith, Sam is a prose short story available exclusively for download at the website HalloweenComics.com. It explores the life of Dr. Loomis, including his backstory and relationship with Elizabeth Worthington, a journalist he met during World War II. In 1995, Michael Myers visits the ailing Dr. Loomis in a hospital and murders Elizabeth in front of him. Loomis attempts to stop him, but dies of a coronary failure.Merchandise
In 1983, Wizard Video, who had also released a video game version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, released a Halloween game for the Atari 2600. In the game, the player is a babysitter who has to protect her children from Michael Myers, who has managed to get inside the house. Although the game is called Halloween, and features the film's theatrical poster as its cover art as well as the movie's main music theme, the game itself never refers to any characters, including the killer, by their names in the film.Halloween has also seen profitability through various merchandise like toys, dolls, statues, model kits, bobbleheads, snow globes, movie posters, masks, T-shirts, hats, and more. Michael Myers has made appearances in the form of dolls and toys from McFarlane Toys, Mezco Toyz, Sideshow Collectibles and NECA. Even Dr. Loomis has been immortalized in plastic alongside Michael Myers in a two-figure set produced by NECA.
The Michael Myers mask has been reproduced over the years by Don Post, the mask company responsible for the creation of the masks from several of the Halloween films. While Don Post reproductions of the Michael Myers mask are still commonly found in costume stores every Halloween, the license to produce Michael Myers masks has since been given to Cinema Secrets, the company commissioned with the creation of the Michael Myers mask for Halloween: Resurrection., Universal Pictures has granted license to Trick or Treat Studios to produce two versions of the Michael Myers mask from Halloween II, one "clean" version and one with the famous "blood tears".
Many versions of the original Halloween as well as several of its sequels have been released on DVD and Blu-ray by Anchor Bay Entertainment, Universal Pictures and Dimension Films. In December 2007, there were reports that the Producer's Cut of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers might get a DVD release in the future.
Following the first Blu-ray release of the original Halloween, all other films in the series were subsequently released to Blu-ray, as well.
Home video distributors Anchor Bay Entertainment and Scream Factory released Halloween: The Complete Collection to Blu-ray on September 23, 2014. This box set brings together all ten Halloween films released to date. Two versions of The Complete Collection were released: a standard 10-disc set featuring the first eight original films of the series and Rob Zombie's 2007 and 2009 remakes, and a "Limited Edition" 15-disc set, containing the ten films on ten discs, and five extra discs featuring the television versions of Halloween and Halloween II, the never-before released Halloween 6: The Producer's Cut, a bonus disc to Rob Zombie's Halloween, and a bonus disc containing all-new special features from all ten films. The box set won the 2015 Saturn Award for Best DVD/BD Collection Release.