Written by John Squires

It was two years ago that Trick ‘r Treat director Michael Dougherty announced Sam would return in a sequel, though those plans seemed to fall through in favor of the writer/director dipping his toes into a different holiday with Christmas horror flick Krampus, set for release this December.

Now, as the release date of that film inches closer, Dougherty has opened up about the future of the Trick ‘r Treat universe, telling IGN in an interview that the sequel is still in the cards. In fact, he’s already begun developing Trick ‘r Treat 2, and now that Krampus has been unleashed, it’s a matter of time.

“It’s going to happen,” Dougherty promised the outlet. “It’s just, the tricky thing is, as we were announcing Trick ‘r Treat 2, I was finishing the screenplay for Krampus. It was just too tempting to not do Krampus. If we didn’t do it, someone else was going to.”

“I want to get it right. I don’t want to rush it,” he went on to explain. “We do have a comic book that’s coming out this October, which sort of acts like, I hate to use the world prequel, but it expands the universe a little bit, in that we sort of explore the long history of Halloween, before the first film. It’s four different stories – one is set in ancient Ireland, one is 1950s Los Angeles, there’s one in the 1800s in the Old West and one is contemporary suburbia, traditional Halloween. In the stories we sort of explore how Halloween was shaped and guided by Sam.”

So what can we expect from Trick ‘r Treat 2?

“The skeleton of the sequel is there, and right now it’s really four different stories – with the exception of Sam, who serves as that intertwining link,” noted Dougherty. “I do think it’s important that if you’re new to Trick ‘r Treat that you can sit down and watch it without the baggage of the first one. But that’s not to say that we won’t have some threads that tie everything together or maybe some characters from the other film might pop up in some fashion. Maybe some characters from Krampus might show up, who knows.”

For now, we not-so-patiently wait.