No matter how hard you try, or how many times you shoot him/stab him/etc., you just can’t keep a good bogeyman down. In news that no one saw coming, it’s been announced that legendary writer/director/composer John Carpenter is returning to the Halloween franchise for its 10th installment. Carpenter will produce, but not direct, the new movie along with Jason Blumhouse’s Blumhouse Productions, making this the first of these movies since 1983’s Halloween III to have any involvement from Carpenter. Although he won’t be directing, he may be providing the film’s score, which is as iconic a part of the franchise as Michael Myers himself.

The news was announced at a press conference, (via Dread Central) with Jason Blumhouse and Malak Akkad in attendance; the latter’s father produced Carpenter’s first Halloween film in 1978. The younger Akkad himself is a producer best known for Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), the Rob Zombie Halloween remake (2007), and Halloween II (2009). The new Halloween film has a target date of October, 2017.Blumhouse Productions is the modern face of horror films, having produced the Paranormal Activity series, as well as the Insidious and Sinister series. Blumhouse is known for making horror films for a very tight budget, and therefore making quite a profit on them when all is said and done. The original Halloween was also made for very little money back in 1978, and it looks like they are taking that back-to-basics approach for Halloween 10. (which probably won’t be called Halloween 10).

So will the new film be a reboot, a sequel to the original films, or a third chapter in the Rob Zombie saga? Well, based on comments made by Carpenter, probably not the latter. When asked what the new movie would be like, he said “You know what? We’re probably going to go back to the original tradition that we started. It’s kind of gone astray. I feel like the remakes maybe went off somewhere that I didn’t want them to go.”

He then added “Michael Myers is not a character. He is a force of nature. He is not a person. He’s part supernatural, part human. He’s like the wind, an evil wind. If you start straying away from that, and you get into explaining, then you’ve lost. So hopefully we can guide it back in the original direction.”

At the press conference, Carpenter said, “Thirty-eight years after the original Halloween I’m going to help to try to make the 10th sequel the scariest of them all.” If you’re a fan of the classic Halloween series, then this is all music to your ears.

Is this news enough to get you excited about a tenth Halloween movie? Can John Carpenter help erase the memory of lackluster sequels and reboots? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Image: Image: Trancas International Films