Halloween TV series will honor original film in the best way

The 1978 classic is getting a TV adaptation, and the Halloween series might just be the perfect homage to one of the greatest horror movies ever made.

Try as they might, the number of horror movies that can live up to the legacy of John Carpenter’s Halloween are far and few between. Halloween was a film of greats: the greatest scream queen, the greatest horror score, and the greatest slasher icon of all time.

Michael Myers has been doing his thing in the genre for decades now, with an entire franchise and plenty of kills behind him. (And by “doing his thing”, we mean lingering menacingly, partially obscured by things, of course!)

Halloween-heads got the news last year that there was a TV series in the works. Since then, the question of whether the series would go back to basics or put a new spin on the classic story hung in the air, but we finally have an answer as to what the show will be about. It’s good news, at that.

Halloween TV show will “go back to the original film” says Miramax head

Marc Helwig, Head of Worldwide Television at Miramax, confirmed to Deadline that the upcoming Halloween TV series would take place in the world of the original 1978 movie.

“It’s a big world,” Helwig said, referring to the now vast franchise. 2022’s Halloween Ends, the final movie in the recent revival trilogy, ended with a sure-enough conclusion (about as “sure” as a movie with Michael Myers in it can be, anyway). As such, Helwig doesn’t think the TV show is an “opportunity to go off the back of that.”

Universal

“The foundation of it is the original film, the John Carpenter movie, the characters of that film, and perhaps a group of characters that we haven’t really focused on that much in recent film versions or even in a number of them,” he said. “It’s a creative reset completely and going back to the original film, as opposed to spinning out of any of the more recent film adaptations.”

Rumors of a Halloween TV series pitch go back as far as 2016. However, according to Trancas International Films head Malek Akkad (who is co-producing the series), development for a show has been in the works as early as 2008 [via Bloody Disgusting].

While this would be the first time Michael Myers has stepped into the TV realm, it’s nothing new in the world of franchise horror. Chucky, The Evil Dead, and Scream have all received the TV treatment in the past. At this point, it makes sense for everyone’s favorite embodiment of pure evil to hit the small screen.

For more screams, check out our list of the best horror movies on Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video.