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‘Oculus’ director reportedly in talks to helm new Halloween movie

Rick Marshall
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Updated on 05-25-2016 by Rick Marshall: The planned Halloween movie might have found its director. Bloody Disgusting reports that Mike Flanagan, the director of 2013’s critically praised indie horror hit Oculus and this year’s Hush, is currently in talks to direct the upcoming Halloween movie.

One of the longest-running horror franchises of all time is going back to its roots.

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Blumhouse Productions has announced that a new installment of the Halloween franchise is in the works, with original Halloween director and co-writer John Carpenter attached as an executive producer on the project. It’s unknown whether the film will be a reboot of the franchise, a sequel to the original seven-film slasher series, or a sequel to the recent two-film reboot of the franchise by writer/director Rob Zombie.

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“38 years after the original Halloween, I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all,” said Carpenter in a statement accompanying the announcement.

Over the last decade, Blumhouse has found quite a bit of success with low-budget horror films that win over audiences without hefty production costs, including the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and The Purge franchises. Given that Carpenter’s original Halloween accomplished a similar feat in 1978 — earning more than $70 million worldwide on a film made for $300,000 — the match seems like a good one for the franchise, which stumbled a bit in the later sequels and recent reboot.

Carpenter will serve as an executive producer on the new movie, but reports suggest that Blumhouse founder Jason Blum is also hoping the accomplished filmmaker will compose the score for the film — much as he did with the original, iconic Halloween score.

“Halloween is one of those milestone films that inspired everyone at our company to get into the world of scary movies,” said Blum in a statement released with the announcement. “The great Malek Akkad [producer and son of original Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad] and John Carpenter have a special place in the hearts of all genre fans and we are so excited that Miramax brought us together. We cannot wait to find and collaborate with the right filmmaker to give Halloween fans the movie they deserve.”

There’s no word on when the new Halloween movie will begin production at this point.

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Rick Marshall
Rick Marshall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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