Trick ‘r Treat was destined to become a cult classic. Screenwriter Michael Dougherty‘s feature directorial debut Trick R Treat sat on the shelf for over two years, before being dumped on DVD/Blu-ray by Warner Bros — despite earning great reviews and buzz from a handful of screenings. The horror anthology has become a staple of the halloween watching line-up of so many of my friends, but I don’t think anyone ever expected a sequel…

Announced at Monday night’s fan screening in Hollywood, Dougherty surprised the crowd by announcing a sequel during the Q&A session. No more details were announced. Header photo thanks to uhnet. After the jump you can see a better resolution look at the logo and read some quotes.

Dougherty reveals some of the backstory to Entertainment Weekly:

It’s funny because when I first dreamt up the idea of making the first film, I thought, “How neat would it be if we made them a series?” I’m a firm believer that October should be filled with Halloween movies, or horror movies. That’s something I remember from childhood. Horror movies and Halloween, they go hand-in-hand. And so the idea was, “Well we could probably do a Trick ‘r Treat movie every year or every other year, and that it would sort of just be a new batch of stories and characters. And the common link between all of them would be Sam.” Initially that was the plan, and then things changed as the first film had a very delayed, strange journey. I put those dreams on hold for a little while, so it feels good to go back to that initial plan. … I think it’d be great to make it a trilogy, at least. So fingers crossed. For me, I think every film should explore a different aspect of Halloween. I felt like the first film was the very traditional, suburban Halloween that we all have some memory of. But as I’ve grown up over the years, I’ve lived everywhere from Columbus, Ohio to New York to L.A., and I find that the holiday is very different depending on where you live. Or even time periods. I don’t see why we should be limited to just present day stories. Halloween is an amazing holiday because it evolves depending on where you live and the time period.

Michael admits they are in the early stages and “don’t even have a script yet.” As for what he has planned, he’s not revealing much:

There’s nothing I can reveal yet. It’s still really early in the process, but I can definitely say that we’ll be exploring Sam more and maybe getting into some back story of who and what he actually is.

He does want to keep the anthology format of the first film for future installments, and explore different horror monsters:

I think we’ll shake it up a little bit. There are different archetypes I’d like to explore, different types of monsters. We covered werewolves, vampires, and zombies, but there’s a whole slew of different creatures out there that we haven’t tackled, and I think Sam would probably be pretty good buddies with. So I think it’s time to let them have their time in the sun.

We’re not sure how much Legendary Pictures’ departure from the Burbank-based WB studio has to do with this announcement. Sounds like they are unsure if the sequel will be theatrically released or direct to home video. Either way, I’m excited we will be getting more.