John Carpenter has opened up to express his happiness about the overall success of the Halloween reboots. The series continued with the release of Halloween Kills, which debuted last year. Halloween Ends will cap off the current trilogy of David Gordon Green-directed Halloween movies when it premieres on October 14.
Carpenter is one of Hollywood’s most beloved and influential auteurs. Beginning his career with films such as Dark Star and Assault on Precinct 13, he quickly made a name for himself as The Master of Horror with the release of Halloween in 1978. The film redefined the slasher genre and created an instant icon in the form of Michael Myers. Carpenter was much less directly involved in the Halloween sequels following the release of Halloween II, but he has long been associated with the slasher world and the rampages of Michael Myers. That association reached a peak when Blumhouse rebooted Halloween and brought the series back to the timeline of the original, bringing Carpenter back as a producer as well.
On the heels of Halloween Kills, and with Halloween Ends set to cap off the current Halloween trilogy later this year, Carpenter’s horror creation arguably remains as popular as ever. With that in mind, the filmmaker recently opened up to The AV Club and confirmed that he appreciates the success of these films, and also appreciates the success of his own financial compensation related to these films. Carpenter said:
I feel fabulous about it. It is also fabulous when I look up from my perch on my couch and a check arrives in the mail. I feel extremely happy.
The newly rebooted Halloween timeline is the most involved Carpenter has been with the Halloween franchise since he wrote the script for Halloween II. As such, he largely disconnected from the series during the bulk of the 1980s through much of the 2010s. Now, as he has returned to the franchise and taken a more involved role as a producer and composer, he is appreciative of the fact that audiences still love the world he created. Moreover, he clearly appreciates that the success of these films is financially beneficial for him.
This is relatively consistent with the persona that Carpenter has cultivated for himself over the years. Despite his ever-increasing popularity and downright legendary run of films in the 1970s and 1980s, his movies rarely received budgets on par with many of his peers, and movies like The Thing often took years to be re-evaluated and appreciated by genre fans. Because of this, Carpenter has largely retired from filmmaking and obviously appears to enjoy his newfound freedom to sit back, get paid, and play the latest and greatest video games to his heart’s content while still occasionally returning to his most beloved properties, with Halloween Ends serving as the latest example of that phenomenon.
Source: The AV Club
