Back in February of last year, it was announced that David Gordon Green and Danny McBride were developing a brand new instalment in the Halloween franchise, which would see John Carpenter returning to the series as executive producer, as well as Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode.

It was subsequently revealed that the new film will be a straight sequel to the 1978 original, ignoring the events of the subsequent instalments, and ditching the supernatural elements of the latter movies. However, as McBride has revealed to Flickering Myth’s Rafael Motamayor at SXSW, there will still be plenty of references to these discarded entries for fans to pick up on.

“This picks up after the first one,” said McBride. “The Halloween franchise has kind of become a little bit of like choose your own adventure, you know like there’s some many different versions, and the timeline is so mixed up, we just thought it would be easier to go back to the source and contnue from from there. It was nicer than knowing you’re working on Halloween 11, it just seemed cooler, ‘we’re making Halloween 2‘. We do [reference the other movies]. For fans, we pay homage and respect to every Halloween that has been out there.”

Will that include Halloween III: Season of the Witch? We’ll find out this October…

Halloween is being directed by David Gordon Green from a script by Green and Danny McBride. In addition to the returning Jamie Lee Curtis (Laurie Strode) and Nick Castle (Michael Myers), the film stars Judy Greer (War for the Planet of the Apes), Andi Matichak (Orange Is the New Black), Will Patton (Shots Fired), Virginia Gadner (Runaways), Miles Robbins (Mozart in the Jungle), Dylan Arnold (Mudbound) and Drew Scheid (Stranger Things).

Halloween is is set for release on October 19th, 2018.