Taking Shape II: The Lost Halloween Sequels by Dustin McNeill & Travis Mullins

Author:Dustin McNeill & Travis Mullins [McNeill, Dustin & Mullins, Travis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-14T07:00:00+00:00

FILMS: HALLOWEEN HADDONFIELD/ASYLUM ‘04

To embrace the past, you must first relive it.

When it comes to movie franchises with waning popularity, there are several ways to continue churning out profitable sequels – all of which involve dramatically cutting costs. One way is to release future installments direct-to-video rather than theatrical, which saves enormously on prints and advertising. Another way is to shoot in a foreign country with generous tax incentives and low working wages. Yet another way is to shoot not one but two sequels back-to-back to save on overhead investment. (This is something even major franchises do, such as on Superman, The Matrix, and Back to the Future.)

Being the shrewd genre arm of an indie studio, Dimension Films had been utilizing these cost-saving tactics for years, all the way back to its initial formation in 1992. In fact, the studio’s very first production – Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth – was shot back-to-back with its second – Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice. Dimension would repeat these tactics on films throughout the ‘90s but never all three at once. At least, not until the early 2000s. That’s when the studio produced back-to-back, direct-to-video sequels to Hellraiser, The Prophecy, and Dracula 2000, all of which were filmed on location in Bucharest, Romania. This strategy paid off exactly as intended, yielding six sequels to three well-established franchises for well below industry costs.

Believe it or not, for the briefest moment, Dimension reportedly mulled taking the back-to-back sequel approach with the ninth and tenth installments of the Halloween franchise. Granted, this was but one of several directions under consideration at the time. Never was it a front-burner priority for the studio. But such an assignment was given to screenwriter John Sullivan, who was then a rising young talent within the industry. Circa 2003, Dimension had brought Sullivan into their offices to hear pitches on several in-development properties. (These included sequels to Mimic and Rambo, and also a prequel to Total Recall.) While the studio passed on his pitches to these three franchises, they did offer him the opportunity to write back-to-back sequels to The Prophecy. Yet upon viewing the original trilogy, Sullivan realized he already had a pair of unproduced screenplays that could be easily retrofitted to align within that franchise’s universe. He sent them to Dimension, who agreed with his assessment and bought them outright. Sullivan was then hired to customize his own stories into what would become The Prophecy: Uprising and The Prophecy: Forsaken.

Pleased with his work, Dimension then offered Sullivan a chance to pitch back-to-back Halloween sequels – an opportunity the writer jumped at. Sullivan had long been a fan of not only horror films but of the entire Halloween franchise as well. While the distribution fate of these potential follow-ups was never explicitly stated, Sullivan maintains that from his impression, they were to be lower-budget efforts intended for the direct-to-video market. (Recall the franchise had almost been here once before with Halloween 7.) This in mind, Sullivan began to envision sequel stories that could be shot economically.

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