Back in 2017, Universal Cable Productions announced a development deal with John Carpenter, which was to see the horror master executive producing scripted programming with UCP for the NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment portfolio, as well as for external networks and streaming services, along with his producing partner, Sandy King.

UCP and Carpenter went into development on “Tales for a Halloween Night” for SYFY, we learned. The series was to be based on Carpenter’s award-winning graphic novel anthology of stories where he brings together storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for a collection of horror stories featuring graveyards, sunken ships, creepy crawlers and ghosts.

Carpenter was intending on directing “at least” the pilot episode of the series. but Sandy King breaks the bad news this week that the plug – for good reason, it seems – has been pulled.

“SYFY wanted Tales for a Halloween Night but it quickly became evident that they just wanted the title. And I really saw a disaster on the horizon,” King just told ComicBook.com. “So I went, ‘No, no, no. This is not a good idea.’ It was a greenlit series but if it’s not gonna be something cool for the fans and for the eventual audience, then I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it.”

“It’s dead,” King confirmed. “I think we have a pretty good idea what our fans want to see. It doesn’t mean something can’t be done but at its core, the people we work with have to respect horror fans and respect the genre. That’s the core of it. Not just respect the fact that horror right now makes money.”

In other words, if it’s going to be done, it’s going to be done right. Respect.