Horror legendJohn Carpenterhas always spoke his mind, rarely pulling his punches when expressing his thoughts about the industry. Most recently, he expressed his distaste for AMC’sThe Walking Deadand the iconicFriday the 13thfranchise, and over the weekend, he also spoke out about the 2007 remake of his own horror classic,Halloween. The filmmaker didn’t have too many kind things to say about the movie itself, and its director,Rob Zombie, whoJohn Carpentersaid lied about him in an interview.
Back in April,John Carpentertook part in an interview with the New York Film Academy, which has started to make the rounds over the weekend, specifically a section of the hour-long discussion where he discusses his thoughts onRob Zombieand the 2007Halloweenreboot. The filmmaker revealed that he was supposed to take part in a documentary series on the whole franchise, when he discovered inRob Zombie’s interview that he lied aboutJohn Carpenter. Here’s what the director had to say below.
“He lied about me. He said that I was very cold to him when he told me that he was going to make [Halloween]. Nothing could be further from the truth. I said, ‘Make it your own movie, man. This is yours now. Don’t worry about me.’ I was incredibly supportive. Why that piece of shit lied, I don’t know. He had no reason to. Why did he do it? So, frankly, that will color my response to the film. If I take that away, I did not… I thought that he took away the mystique of the story by explaining too much about [Michael Myers]. I don’t care about that. He’s supposed to be a force of nature. He’s supposed to be almost supernatural. And he was too big. It wasn’t normal.”
The 2007Halloween remakeonly earned $58.7 million domestically and $80.2 million worldwide, while isn’t a massive gross, but it still paved the way for a sequel.Halloween II, which hit theaters in 2009, only earned $33.3 million domestically and $39.4 million worldwide. Dimension Films, which had held the rights to the franchise, was planning on rebooting the franchise once again, but they eventually lost the rights.
We reported earlier this year that thefranchise rightswere picked up by producerJason Blum’s Blumhouse, withJohn Carpenterhimself coming aboard to executive produce with longtime franchise producerMalak Akkadreturning as well.John Carpenterreferred to this project as the “10th sequel” instead of a reboot, but we haven’t heard any further details about this project. Take a look at the videos below from the New York Film Academy event, the first of which features the director’s response to the fan’sHalloweenquestion, along with another video with the full hour-long video.
