Last week we got our first look at the new Halloween film, which is set to deliver a direct sequel to the 1978 classic, ignoring subsequent instalments, as Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode finds herself face to face with Michael Myers once again some 40 years after those fateful events in Haddonfield, Illinois.
During an interview with Dread Central, Curtis has been discussing what Laurie Strode has been up to these past forty years, as she prepares herself and her family for the night he came home… again.
“I think for Laurie Strode, society has not been kind to her,” said Curtis. “She lives alone, she has tried to live in society but society has not been welcoming. There were not a lot of mental health professionals helping this young woman, she banged her way into her life, she slammed into people, institutions, law enforcement, and they hate her because she calls the police every day, says ‘Do you have somebody patrolling Smith’s Grove? I was out there, I actually sat in my car all day outside of Smith’s Grove and I didn’t see one cop car. Why is that? Why aren’t you treating him with the respect that you should treat him?'”
“I don’t think she has left Haddonfield in forty years,” she continues. “This is a woman who knows exactly where [Michael] is and she knows, even though they all are convinced that he’s somebody who they can maybe manage, work with drugs, rehabilitate, all the rest of it. She is the only one who knows exactly who he is, and that’s who we find. Laurie Strode is a survivor. She survived by her wits, even though she made stupid errors, like throwing the knife away twice. Laurie isn’t a badass, she’s smart and she survived. I also don’t want her to be a badass, I want her to be prepared. I want her to still be who she is but prepared because she’s not Linda Hamilton, I don’t have those arms. She was strong because she was smart. It’s tricky because we’ve turned strong women into superhero women and that isn’t what makes a woman strong, we’re not talking about physical strength, we’re talking about intelligence and wile and all the beautiful things that make a smart woman so dynamic so I’m hoping to fight against becoming too much badass and keep the integrity of her intelligence that I have brought into this piece, I fought for that.”
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Master of horror John Carpenter will executive produce and serve as creative consultant on this film, joining forces with cinema’s current leading producer of horror, Jason Blum (Get Out, Split, The Purge, Paranormal Activity). Inspired by Carpenter’s classic, filmmakers David Gordon Green and Danny McBride crafted a story that carves a new path from the events in the landmark 1978 film, and Green also directs.
Halloween is being directed by David Gordon Green from a script by Green and Danny McBride. In addition to the returning Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode) and Nick Castle (Michael Myers), the film stars Judy Greer (War for the Planet of the Apes), Andi Matichak (Orange Is the New Black), Will Patton (Shots Fired), Virginia Gardner (Runaways), Miles Robbins (Mozart in the Jungle), Dylan Arnold (Mudbound) and Drew Scheid (Stranger Things).