This Scrapped Halloween Sequel Turned Laurie Strode Into Michael Myers

John Carpenter’s Halloween is one of the most influential horror movies of all time. It’s also one of the most successful, which is why it’s gone on to spawn countless sequels, and even a remake by Rob Zombie. And of course, there’s the most recent trilogy done by David Gordon Green, which revamped the story and brought it back to its roots, away from the supernatural and the convoluted storylines that have come to be over the years. Some of those storylines included things like Michael Myers being controlled by a cult, the Myers house being the setting of a hip new reality show hosted by Busta Rhymes, and more. And those are the ideas that got approved, so one can only imagine the ideas that got denied. One of these ideas in particular was made public, and it would have changed everything about the franchise.

Halloween (1978)

R

Horror

Thriller

Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.

Release Date

October 27, 1978

Director

John Carpenter

Cast

Donald Pleasence , Jamie Lee Curtis , Tony Moran , Nancy Kyes , P.J. Soles

Runtime

91 minutes

Main Genre

Horror

Writers

John Carpenter , Debra Hill

‘Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers’ Was Originally Much Different

In 2021, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Daniel Farrands, the writer behind Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers. If you need a quick refresher, Curse of Michael Myers is the one where Michael has supposedly been a part of a cult his entire life, and that is why he kills. Obviously. Oh, and it has Paul Rudd! In the feature, Farrands discusses the unmade sequel he wrote that would serve as a follow-up to Halloween: H20. It never came to be, and instead we got Halloween: Resurrection, but Farrands remembers it fondly. According to Farrands, when he showed Moustapha Akkad his script for Curse of Michael Myers, Akkad loved it but said that it was too long and that it should be broken up into two. At the time, movies were being greenlit back to back like they are now, so that second part never came to be, but it did sound pretty dang cool.

Farrands’ original plan for Curse of Michael Myers’ ending saw Kara Strode (Marianne Hagan). He explained that Tommy would find her with her throat slit, and the children missing, and the story would take on a sort of “Tommy VS. Michael” angle. But it was the second part of his script that really took things on a different path.

“The second part of the movie, the
Halloween
7 treatment that I had inadvertently written, takes place in Haddonfield where the murders are happening. People are a little bit like in

Halloween Kills

, where people are just kind of engaged in their Halloween stuff, they know something’s happened, then people are locking their doors. There’s not a mob, but kind of like that. That group fear. Then a few of them go out in the night to try to hunt him, and those people start getting killed off.” Farrands explained. “Then what we ultimately would realize is that this coven, this secret society, was made up of a lot of the people within the town of Haddonfield. It wasn’t just this group of underground people at the sanitarium. It was almost like a ritual. It was very inspired by
Shirley Jackson
’s

The Lottery

. I thought if you apply that to a Halloween story of where a family is chosen to be sacrificed, and that this tradition goes back to the early days of Druids and Halloween and the celebration of Samhain … and that was kind of the idea. At the end, you would see that the whole town has come out in a

Wicker Man

sort of way, and has chosen their final sacrifice.”

But it didn’t stop there. The final moments of Daniel Farrands’ proposed sequel saw Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) make her big comeback. “The end of the movie was, Jamie Lloyd’s (Danielle Harris) life was about to be taken by this mob and Michael, and all of a sudden out of this crowd appears a dark figure. It turns out to be Laurie, and she’s there to save her daughter. And that was the end of the film.” Farrands revealed that there was no plan on how to progress from that ending, and since it hadn’t even been greenlit there was no reason to think about it further. Instead, Halloween: H20 was made and released to much fanfare, and when another sequel was announced, Farrands was brought in to pitch his idea. And somehow he manages to top his Halloween 7 idea.

A Scrapped ‘Halloween’ Sequel Turned Laurie Strode Into Michael Myers

As far as final girls go, Laurie Strode is one of the most well-known and most beloved, and for good reason. When we first meet her, she fits the typical final girl mold; she’s timid, she dresses conservatively, and she’s a picture-perfect babysitter. But when it comes down to it, and she has to fight against Michael, she steps up to the plate big time. Not only to save her life, but to save the lives of Lindsay Wallace (Kyle Richards) and Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews), the kids she’s babysitting. And in every sequel she appears in after she’s only grown stronger. She’s dealt with some intense trauma, and it’s followed her her entire life, but she never backs down or gives in, and she always comes out on top. But that fact was used as leverage, as a way to make Laurie the villain in a proposed idea for Halloween 8. Yes, you read that right. They were going to turn Laurie Strode into Michael Myers.

The film was going to be called Halloween 8: Lord of the Dead and would serve as a sequel to H20 while pulling inspiration from Curse of Michael Myers. “So in my take, I kind of took some cues from that original expanded treatment for 6. I thought, ‘Well, you know, there’s kind of an interesting idea here, but Michael Myers is clearly dead at the end of H20 … but they want the franchise to keep going.’ So I wrote up this very brief take, drawing from parts of that original Halloween 6/7 treatment that I had written back in the day, and I updated it so that it would kind of pick up from the events of H20, but also kind of taking it back to where we left off with 6. I was kind of trying to do a little damage control, too. Like, ‘Let’s not totally write off what we did. Let’s not spend too much time on it, but let’s not totally write it off either.’” He went on to say that his script would begin with a summary of both Halloween 6 and Halloween: H20, and would follow Tommy Doyle again. This time he would be reading through Dr. Loomis’ (Donald Pleasance) old diaries and piecing together parts of Michael’s history. The movie would act as a backstory of sorts for Michael’s time in the sanitarium, but there was a bigger twist in store.

“The twist of my pitch was that, once the hell breaks loose and the murders began and we see all of this mayhem going on, with Tommy sort of taking on the role of Loomis, the big finale when they’re going to finally unmask Michael Myers reveals that the killer is actually Laurie Strode. She’s gone completely batshit crazy and came back to relive the murders that she barely survived, and she’s become like The Shape.” Daniel Farrands revealed. “It kind of made sense to me, because at the end of
Halloween: H20
, what you hear, after she chops his head off with an ax, is that she’s breathing heavily like Michael at the end of the original movie. I thought that was a perfect setup knowing, because they had told me, ‘We have Jamie Lee for five minutes.’ That she was contractually obligated to be in the next movie. And I said, ‘Well, make them the best five minutes.
Don’t just kill her off at the beginning
,’ which sadly they did. I thought, you know, if you’re going to bring her in again, just don’t tell the audience. Make it a big, big surprise. Give it a twist. Put her in at the end, don’t even say she’s in it, and then when the mask comes off, Laurie’s the killer.”

‘Halloween’ Never Would Have Been the Same

As creative an idea as it is to have Laurie become the killer, and as well-fleshed out as Farrands seemingly had it in his mind, it would’ve changed the franchise forever. And not necessarily in a good way. Shaking things up and doing the unexpected can be quite good for a franchise. Halloween certainly could have benefited from some fresh ideas, and it since has, but making Laurie take on the role of The Shape? That’s a little too far. The biggest issue lies in the motive behind Laurie’s transformation. Having her go “crazy” diminishes everything about her character. She’s spent the entire franchise listening to people tell her she’s crazy and paranoid. No one listened to her until it was too late and she was nearly knocking on death’s door. Having her succumb to those hurtful perceptions and become like Michael would’ve stripped away everything fans love about her character. We want to see her fight Michael and finally take him down, not become him. There’s no denying that she would still be a total badass had her arc gone down that route, but it’s for the best that it didn’t.

It’s certainly an interesting twist. After all, it’s not often we see the final girl go bad. But having the Halloween franchise go that route was a risky idea to flirt with. There’s no telling exactly what the fan reaction would be to such a twist, but given how many people were up in arms over the Michael Myers-less Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, I have to believe that having someone else don the mask wouldn’t go over all that well. In fact, we know it wouldn’t go over well because we saw it with Corey (Rohan Campbell) in Halloween Ends. There’s only one Michael Myers, and there’s only one Laurie Strode, and we’d much rather see them go head-to-head than switch roles.

Halloween is available to stream on Shudder in the U.S.

WATCH ON SHUDDER