Trick ’r Treat fans may still be waiting for Trick ’r Treat 2, but Michael Dougherty has found another way to bring Sam back this Halloween. Dougherty, the writer and director of Trick ’r Treat, Krampus, and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, has launched Sam: The Soul of Halloween, a new creative home for the little supernatural trick-or-treater. The project will feature new Sam short films, animation, artwork, artist collaborations, and limited-edition merchandise, while a newly restored 4K edition of the animated short that started it all, Season’s Greetings, returns to theaters throughout October.
If you’re a Trick ’r Treat fan who has spent years waiting for Trick ’r Treat 2, this might be the closest thing we’re getting to a new Sam adventure for the time being.
Sam returns for the 30th anniversary of Season’s Greetings
Sam didn’t actually make his debut in Trick ’r Treat. The character first appeared in Dougherty’s four-minute animated short Season’s Greetings, which he created in 1996 while he was a film student at NYU. Three decades later, that original short is getting a new lease on life with a newly restored 4K edition playing at genre festivals and independent theaters throughout October.
The anniversary screenings include Screamfest in Los Angeles, the Texas Theatre in Dallas, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in New York, the Music Box Theatre in Chicago, the Gardena Cinema, the Vancouver Horror Show, the Knoxville Horror Fest, the Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, Revue Cinema in Toronto, Telluride Horror Show in Colorado, the Myers House N.C., FilmQuest in Utah, and Sleepy Hollow Cinema, with additional screenings still to be announced.
Dougherty says the response to the restored short helped inspire the larger Sam project.
“What surprised me most was how alive Sam and his debut film still felt thirty years later. People who grew up with Sam were bringing their kids. Artists were reaching out wanting to make things. Fans were showing up in costumes. It started feeling less like looking backward and more like opening a door into a new chapter.”
That new chapter is Sam: The Soul of Halloween.
What is Sam: The Soul of Halloween?
The new project gives Sam an official online home of his own, with a website and social media channels launching today.
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/samthesoulofhalloween
- TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@samthesoulofhalloween
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@samthesoulofhalloween
- X: https://x.com/samofhalloween
Throughout October, the project will release new original Sam content, including animated shorts, illustrations, short films, artist collaborations, and other pieces expanding the character’s peculiar corner of Halloween.
Rather than having one person establish a single new visual style for Sam, Dougherty has invited artists and filmmakers from around the world to interpret the character in their own ways. The October lineup includes work from Ye Aung, Mike Baird, Michael Ballif, Breehn Burns, Rory Dise, Sam Furst, Richard Garcia, Cyrus Haley, Moss Lawton, Austin Pardun, Alexander Ray, Steven Rhodes, Ryan Sawyer, Christopher Shy, Trent Shy, and Christopher Waltemate, with additional surprise collaborations planned throughout the month.
The project will also launch an official online shop featuring limited-edition Sam merchandise, including T-shirts, posters, pins, stickers, and other artwork. Many of those pieces are being created in collaboration with the same artists contributing to the new Sam material, allowing their individual interpretations of the character to make the jump from screen and page to collectibles.
Michael Dougherty isn’t done with Sam
“Trick ’r Treat obviously became a huge part of Sam’s story, and I remain incredibly proud of that film,” Dougherty says. “But Trick ’r Treat wasn’t the first chapter in Sam’s story, and it won’t be the last. It really started with this weird little hand-drawn animated short I made as a film student. And for the 30th anniversary, it felt like the perfect time to go back to those roots — handmade, independent and artist-driven — and see where Sam might wander next.”
What about Trick ’r Treat 2?
It’s hard not to think about the long-awaited Trick ‘r Treat 2 when Dougherty starts talking about giving Sam new stories. We’ve been following the sequel talk for years here at JoBlo, and the project has gotten further than many long-gestating horror sequels ever do. Dougherty previously confirmed that he had several drafts of the screenplay, along with storyboards and concept art, and said he was very happy with the script he developed with Krampus collaborators Zach Shields and Todd Casey. He also revealed that the sequel would give Sam a “proper nemesis” to face, something that could potentially give the little Halloween spirit his biggest challenge yet.
The problem has always been getting the movie made under the circumstances Dougherty wants. In his most recent major update, Dougherty explained that he doesn’t want to compromise simply to get a sequel into production. He wants Trick ’r Treat 2 to retain the nonlinear storytelling and unusual combination of horror and comedy that made the original special, and he wants it made with the right conditions and resources.
So while Sam: The Soul of Halloween isn’t the sequel we’ve been waiting for, it is exciting to see Dougherty continuing to expand Sam’s world. Maybe Trick ’r Treat 2 will eventually happen. For now, though, Sam is back, and Halloween is the perfect time to have him around.
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