It has been well documented that the ending to the new Halloween movie, Halloween Ends, was changed a few times during development by writer and director David Gordon Green. One version of the script even included a reference to the ‘80s movie Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, before that idea was scrapped.
You can never please everyone, especially when it comes to horror movie sequels and potentially franchise-closing films. Our Halloween Ends review is just one of many opinions out there, ranging from utter contempt, to sheer joy at the divisive direction the thriller movie took.
We already know that Halloween Ends used the same title font as Season of the Witch, and this homage to the third instalment in the slasher movie franchise could have been even bigger, as Green explains to MovieMaker what a previous version of the script looked like.
“There was an ending I wrote, that we never filmed, and it takes place at Silver Shamrock factory as it was spitting out witch, skeleton, and jack-o-lanterns masks… and then it started spitting out Michael Myers masks. I had a temptation to go there, but at the end of the day, I thought that’s just fan service for people who know what Silver Shamrock is. It was in every draft of the script ever published [Laughs.] but we never filmed it,” he said.
Any tribute to Season of the Witch had to be carefully considered by Green though: “I love Halloween 3, and I think it could be a vehicle someone can crack and reinvent. One serious conversation I had with our producer Malek Akkad was, do I really want to just throw a gag in my movie that’s gonna f— up what someone could seriously do with that title? It’s a cool movie, so I thought my nods would be the blue titles in the intro for those insightful enough to catch it.”
There’s a fair share of fan service and Halloween Ends Easter eggs in there, but it’s good to know that Green had some restraint at least. If you want to know more about Halloween, check out our feature on why Michael Myers can’t do sequels.