Halloween director talks about “weird discussion” over alternate titles

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The latest HALLOWEEN movie is the third in the long-running series to have that exact title. There was, of course, the 1978 original, and then the 2007 remake from Rob Zombie. That may be confusing for some people, wondering why every time it seems like there’s a new HALLOWEEN movie they just keep calling it HALLOWEEN. Director David Gordon Green and his team spent some time pondering this element, and Green revealed they had a “weird” discussion over the title, all before realizing it would be best for audiences if they just went with the classic.

“That was a weird discussion. You know, do we call it The Shape? Do we call it Halloween Returns? What do you call it? Technically, it’s the third Halloween II. It kind of got to the point where we were like, ‘Well, we don’t want to not invite anybody. We don’t want someone who is unfamiliar with the previous films to think, well, I need to catch up.’ So then we just thought, for simplicity, let’s just call it Halloween.”

Surely there have been some people out there who saw there was another movie simply called HALLOWEEN, saw Michael Myers back in fighting form, and just assumed it was another remake. But if the simple title does serve a purpose beyond proving more accessible for audiences it’s to demonstrate that this movie harkens back to the style of original, favoring chilling, tense thrills over bloody kills.

Coming up with titles other than just HALLOWEEN may have been a bit tricky, as all the obvious best ones like HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION and H20 were already taken, so I guess I can see why they went in the direction they did. However, I do feel like something along the lines of HALLOWEEN RETURNS could have worked. I mean, Michael Myers is returning to his old stomping ground after all. But what do I know; I ain’t in the motion picture racket.

HALLOWEEN is in theaters October 19.