Last week Miramax Pictures (motto: 100 percent Weinstein-Free these days) announced the news that horror fans have been waiting for with baited breath. They have acquired the rights to make a TV series based on John Carpenter’s Halloween franchise. And if that wasn’t enough, there are talks about spinning it off into (drumroll please) a new cinematic universe! Isn’t that great? Isn’t it amazing? Isn’t this the best news you’ve ever heard?

Yeah, I thought the same thing.

I’m sure the question most of you are asking is, is a universe really necessary? The answer, of course, is “No, of course not, what are you, high?” Marvel pulled the cinematic universe off, but nobody else who has tried it has come close to their level of success. Of course, this hasn’t stopped people from attempting it with everything from the works of Roald Dahl to the world of My Little Pony. I’m frankly stunned that no one has tried to link the recent movies Air, Flamin’ Hot, and Blackberry into a “Folks Coming Up With New Products” Cinematic Universe, although now that I’ve willed it into existence, no doubt someone will try.

As for making a TV show out of it…eh. I have mixed feelings. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making a TV series based on a horror franchise. It’s been done before to some acclaim (such as Bates Motel and the current Chucky series), after all. Freddy’s Nightmares cast the titular Krueger as a sort of Cryptkeeper lite, narrating anthology stories, although he occasionally took part in them as well. Then there were shows like Friday the 13th: The Series, which had nothing to do with Jason Voorhees except for a cameo appearance by a hockey mask. It could go either way. The question should be, is Halloween really the best choice for this kind of a project? 

First of all, what storyline are they planning to follow? The film series has been rebooted and restarted so many times that there are no less than five different continuities spread out among the 14 movies, which most of you will recognize as being at least four too many. What’s more, each and every continuity has its own fans and its own detractors, so the idea of choosing one that will satisfy a majority of fans seems slim. The best option is probably to start from scratch and not worry about any of the previous continuities – of course, going that route will only result in a sixth iteration of the franchise. (Which is five too many.)

Let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that they go in this direction: a new continuity, unbound from any of the previous films. And let’s be generous and assume that they do it really well, in a way that all of the fans (okay, let’s be realistic here – a plurality of the fans) are satisfied with the show. That still leaves the question of how the hell you turn a single-villain slasher franchise into a cinematic UNIVERSE. I just don’t think there’s enough meat on that bone.

 If you decide that you want to tie together multiple existing horror franchises, it could make sense. They did it with Freddy Vs. Jason, and the criminally underrated film Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is implied to place in a world where ALL the classic horror movies are canon. The comic book series Hack/Slash takes this approach as well, using generic villains that “feel” like the classics most of the time, but it has also included several official crossovers with horror franchises including Chucky, Hatchet, The Crow, Army of Darkness, and Re-Animator. Of course that’s a comic book, where quick crossovers are relatively easier to negotiate. In a practical sense, with the rights to all these franchises spread out among dozens of different studios, it’s all but impossible to see such a cinematic universe materialize until the Walt Disney Corporation and Shadow Government and Tanning Salon finally gets around to buying up all the different companies, which isn’t scheduled to happen until next Tuesday.

How do you make Halloween, by itself, a universe? There’s only one antagonist, first of all. Maybe more if you count the “Curse of the Thorn” storyline that ran through a few of the films, but that’s frankly one of the weakest ideas in the franchise’s history – never adequately explained and butchering Michael Myers as a character by making him a sort of victim of supernatural forces rather than the personification of evil that makes him so iconic. What other characters could you build a world on? I could see someone planning a prequel series about the life of Dr. Loomis, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good idea. Prequel series are fraught with their own landmines that make them difficult to do successfully. As for the other main characters, does anyone really want to watch Laurie Strode without Michael Myers? For that matter, does anyone really want to watch Laurie Strode without Jamie Lee Curtis? 

As odd as it sounds, if Miramax simply must try the cinematic universe idea, there’s really only one place I think they could look. They need the weirdest, most off-kilter installment of the entire franchise. They need Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Quick history lesson, for those who don’t know how this happened: when John Carpenter was approached to do a third Halloween movie, he decided to take it in a totally different direction. Rather than bring Michael Myers back for Round Three, he tried to make the franchise into an anthology series, with the plan being to make a new horror movie every year or two centered on the holiday of Halloween but totally standing on its own. Season of the Witch is about an evil novelty company that has a bonkers scheme including Druids, Stonehenge, and rubber Halloween masks with the intent to murder millions of innocent children for reasons. It underperformed and was torn apart critically, and the franchise has not deviated from the story of a Michael Myers since. 

In recent years, however, people have begun to reexamine Halloween III, calling it an underrated gem of a film, that it works as a clever deviation from the audience’s expectations, and that Tom Atkins’s mustache does not at all look like a caterpillar hoping to eat his upper lip. I…I’ll be honest, I don’t agree. I mean, the movie has a certain cheesy charm, but that’s far from calling it a good movie. That said, I agree that it may have been received better (as many argue) if it was the second film in the franchise instead of the third, or if it had just been released as a standalone film divorced from the Halloween franchise, or even if it had come out 30 years later, when anthologies were on the rise. 

But the truth is, it doesn’t even matter if the movie itself was good or not – it’s still the bedrock upon which this cinematic universe should lie. I’m not saying they should ignore Michael Myers, of course. Doing a Halloween series without Michael Myers would be as ludicrous as doing, say, a Scream series and changing the mask.

But I think if they link Michael directly to the doings of the Silver Shamrock company, makers of the demonic masks, this may be the linchpin the universe needs to get started. It’s true that Michael Myers should not be a supernatural character. He’s much more frightening and interesting when he’s a murderous, unspeakably evil human being. On the other hand, that’s not the same thing as saying that the supernatural cannot exist in the same universe as him. 

What I would do, were I the showrunner of this hypothetical Halloween series, is start with a sort of platonic ideal of Michael Myers. He’s a killer, he’s escaped from custody, he has terrified the town of Haddonfield, Illinois in the past. I would not marry him to any specific continuity from the previous films. I might mention Laurie Strode or Dr. Loomis, but only in passing – wouldn’t even confirm one way or another whether they’re alive or dead in this universe. The story here is that of the insidious Silver Shamrock company, whose attempt at destroying the world some years ago failed (way to go, Tom Atkins and his mustache!) but they’re ready to try again.

This time, their scheme hinges on Michael Myers. If they can get their hands on the real-life boogeyman, who is again unleashing havoc on a small town, they can use their magic to weaponize the pain and anguish he has caused for their own nefarious ends. How are they going to do it? They’ve got to replace his iconic mask with one of their magic ones. Our heroes, now, are a new group of characters who start out trying to stop Michael’s killing spree (like you do), but halfway through the first season discover the Silver Shamrock connection and realize that they not only have to defeat him, but they also have to save him from falling into Silver Shamrock’s hands. 

So there’s the first season. But how, Blake, does this sort of thing lead into a full-on cinematic universe? Well, there’s a few ways that it could go, but here are the two I would find most interesting, and they’re ideas that compliment each other:

1. Silver Shamrock is a big company, with lots of different cells around the world, each of which is dedicated to wreaking havoc using the local boogeyman of that area. This would not only allow us to create new villains, but we would no longer be limited to just slashers. Bring in other monsters – vampires, werewolves, do a season set in New Orleans featuring the Loup Garou. The possibilities are endless. The important thing is, wherever the current chapter is set, it’s about trying to weaponize fear.
   
2. They’ve been doing this for a while. Who are the other heroes that have stood against them? Perhaps an entire underground society of monster-slayers has risen up, a kind of Buffy crossed with John Wick organization, dedicated to ending the threat of these menaces once and for all. Maybe Loomis was part of it, maybe not. Maybe, if they get really ambitious, they could try to recruit Laurie Strode. Or maybe not – again, if it ain’t Jamie Lee Curtis, that would be a hard sell.

Anyway, with this set-up, you’ve constructed a universe that allows for virtually any kind of horror movie story you want to tell, which is what Carpenter wanted to do with the franchise back in 1982 anyway, except this time it’s all tied together. As for the title – well, that’s simple enough. Under the rules of this shared universe, all of the evil forces we encounter are at their strongest at – drumroll please – Halloween. You can bring in Michael Myers any time you want, but you’re not beholden to him. It’s possible to build a dense mythology, with shows or movies focusing not just on Michael, but on the monster-slayers or any of the various monsters or the history of Silver Shamrock. Hell, you can even throw in the Curse of the Thorn as one of the various evil organizations our monster-slayers fight against. A set up like this would give the world room to grow.

This is what I would do, anyway. But I’m not on the payroll of Miramax (although I would be willing to discuss compensation for this obviously brilliant idea), and odds are if they’ve even gone far enough to tell people they’re planning a cinematic universe, they’ve probably also got an idea already as to how they want to do it. That’s their prerogative. What I’m here for is to suggest a way to do it that’s not just a case of retreading old ground. 

And if they instead just do more of the same and it flops…well, I guess I’ll see you at Halloween Iteration Seven. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. Come back next time when he explains to you the intricacies of the Prom Night cinematic universe! (Hint: there isn’t one.)