Halloween Returns in continuity with John Carpenter’s original?

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Yesterday, Moviehole's scoop on the title and plot of the eleventh HALLOWEEN movie, HALLOWEEN RETURNS, opened the gates for news on the project to come flooding through. We then learned that screenwriter Marcus Dunstan, who is writing the script with Patrick Melton, will be directing as well, and Dimension Films made the official announcement that filming will commence in July.

A refresher on what Moviehole's sources said the plot is:

“Halloween Returns” will pit a new group of Haddonfield youngsters against Myers. The now 18-year-old child of one of Myers’ victims plays a central role along with the child of a cop who has long been obsessed with Myers’ case, even putting it before his own daughter.

Myers is now on Death Row and the two kids with their own personal vendettas against the killer sneak in to watch his execution. But when things go awry and Myers escapes, the pair, along with their friends, find themselves in the firing line.

After all that went on, ShockTillYouDrop dug up a scoop of their own. The question on every fan's mind as a new HALLOWEEN entered development was, where exactly would this fit into the continuity? Would it follow Rob Zombie's 2007 remake and its 2009 sequel, would it follow a pre-remake timeline, or would it be creating its own, entirely new timeline? At one point, the MY BLOODY VALENTINE remake team of director Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer had been set to make a direct sequel to Rob Zombie's HALLOWEEN II, but that's not the way Dunstan and Melton are going.

According to Shock, HALLOWEEN RETURNS will instead be picking up sometime after 1981's HALLOWEEN II, presumably keeping only the original, John Carpenter-scripted films in continuity. One of the strongest links to those films is the character of Gary Hunt, a Haddonfield, Illinois police officer who was played by Hunter von Leer in HALLOWEEN II. Hunt returns in HALLOWEEN RETURNS, now the sheriff of Haddonfield and a man obsessed with Myers.

If this is the case, it won't be the first time the HALLOWEEN franchise ignored its own sequels. 1998's HALLOWEEN H20 took the same approach of wiping out everything that happened after HALLOWEEN II.

I was upset when H20 purged sequels from the timeline, but at this point I'm not concerned with whether or not films acknowledge other entries in a series, I just want a good movie. In my book, the last great HALLOWEEN was HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS in 1988, but I'm always open to the franchise winning me back.

HALLOWEEN H20's Jodi Lyn O'Keefe