“It was always going to be the forty-year old version of the original mask, which you know, is a terribly difficult thing to do, probably one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my career, and I’ve been doing this for almost thirty years,” said FX artist Christopher Allen Nelson of the creation of the latest iteration of the iconic Michael Myers mask, currently on display in the first trailer (below) for director David Gordon Green’s upcoming October film release, Halloween.

This past February 1st in Charleston, South Carolina, the Academy and Emmy award winning Nelson, fully aware of the scrutiny he would receive by the Halloween series fan-base, expounded on his creation to HalloweenMovies.

“I’ve done a lot of stuff, and this was difficult because every photo you look at of that mask is different, and every angle is different,” said Nelson, who over the course of his formidable career has amassed an impressive filmography in the world of makeup. “(The original) mask was such a perfect storm of who was wearing it and the shape of his face and how his hair was and how they shot it. There were so many factors that made up why that mask looked the way it looked, and I took that into account (in sculpting this).”

Of the original, which was famously worn by Nick Castle in John Carpenter’s seminal classic and which was little more than a modified William Shatner ‘Captain Kirk’ mask purchased for a buck ninety eight at Burt Wheeler’s now defunct magic shop on Hollywood Boulevard, Nelson effused, “I’m one of the biggest Halloween fans in the entire universe. I’ve been watching it for forty years. I saw it when it first came out. I had all the novelizations of it and was obsessed with The Shape so of course, given this task I tried really, really hard to give them something good, and though it will never be the original mask, for a lot of reasons (which) I encountered when I started working on it, (I tried to deliver) a version that after forty years people will be happy with. Something that will have expression and character, and when you see it, it’ll bring that character (of The Shape) back.”

The eleventh film in the franchise and co-written by director Green, Danny McBride and Jeff Fradley, Halloween is intended as a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 film of the same name, and in essence, disregards all of the series subsequent entries. Trancas International Films’ Malek Akkad, Blumhouse’s Jason Blum and Bill Block produce, with McBride, Green and star Jamie Lee Curtis serving as executive producers, along with Ryan Freimann and series originator Carpenter, who also serves as the film’s composer. In it, series star Curtis returns to her role of embattled final girl Laurie Strode, as does Nick Castle to his role of Michael Myers (with assist by actor and stuntman Jim Courtney). They are joined by Judy Greer as Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, and Andi Matichak as Allyson Strode, Laurie’s granddaughter. The cast additionally includes Virginia “Ginny” Gardener, Dylan Arnold, Drew Scheid and Miles Robbins.

As for the process of recreating the iconic mask, Nelson, who’s worked on everything from 90s cult fave Return of the Living Dead III to next year’s big-budget Captain Marvel, stated, “It was clay, sculpted on (stuntman and actor) Jim Courtney’s life cast. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I had thousands of reference photos from the first movie, and a little from the second, and all of them from every single angle, and I also had a pull from the Kirk mold that I used as reference as well.”

In sculpting the mask to communicate the passage of time as dictated by the film’s narrative, “I looked at a lot of forty year old masks, and the various stages they were in,” offered the artist. “I actually had a couple of old Don Post masks that were I think from thirty-nine years ago, from when I was a kid and a few of my friends had them. So we looked at those masks (in order) to see how they aged, (and to) see what kind of decomposition they had and what folds and wrinkles they had depending on how they were kept, and we took in mind in the context of this story how this mask was stored over all these years, and just kind of combined all of that. (We) accentuated it a little for cinematic purposes, because a lot of the wear and tear on a mask probably wouldn’t show up unless it was really decomposed, and we really didn’t go that way because in our minds it was kept in a bag, in a box, in an evidence room for quite a long time, so being covered and away from UV light, it was a little more protected than a mask that was just laying out would be. So we took that into account.”

Nelson, when asked if whether or not a mask was sculpted specifically for originator and The Shape actor Castle, answered, “I had multiple masks. The one Castle’s wearing no one has worn. It was made specifically for Nick to wear. It’s a little thinner and has a little more play, and a little more room for a differently shaped head, so his mask was specifically made for him, but not sculpted on him.”

“I’ve allowed extra room in the back of the mask for some play,” expounded Nelson, who over the course of his career has worked for such FX royalty as Rick Baker, Steve Johnson, KNB and Stan Winston, “because in the original film that mask changed and warped. Sometimes he had his chin in the neck, and sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes it warped this way. Sometimes it shifted. Sometimes you could see under his eyes. I wanted it to move. I wanted it to look different in every shot because the original did that, and I wanted to bring that back, and throughout this shooting process it looks different in every shot, and that’s what I love about it. That was a little touch that I wanted it to have, because the reason that it works so well in the original is that it shifted and moved and looked different. It was a shape-shifting sort of boogeyman, and so you’re always kind of like, ‘What is going on there?’ and I wanted that same thing. There’s a lot of thought to it.”

With the release of the first poster for the film in April of 2018, hawk-eyed and Photoshop-savvy fans of the series were quick to spot a detail hidden in the black sockets of Myers’ visage: a milky eye surrounded by scar tissue (a result of an injury the character suffered at the lands of Laurie Strode in the original).

Commented Nelson (who pulls double-duty in Halloween by making an appearance in the film as Officer Francis) on this, “Absolutely, yeah, I did that. I looked at when Laurie pulls the mask off (him) in the original, and you see something there. Now mind you, it’s pretty obscure in that one. It’s hard to get a really good look at it, but it left an impression and I tried to recreate that impression. It has a shape and a vibe and a sadness to it and I wanted that and David wanted it. I think it was only scheduled to shoot for a couple of days, but we’ve been putting it on almost every day because it’s just working. You can kind of see it behind the mask a little bit, and it adds a little to the depth of that without revealing anything or making him too human.”

Questioned as to whether or not VFX will be employed in post-production in order to darken those sockets, Nelson said, “Not that I know of. It’s working very well the way they’re lighting it, and the way that they’re shooting it. We want it all practical and very moody and again, to be natural. I think that (VFX) would take away from the character that Michael Myers is. Once you see something like that, where the eyes are blacked out or you add a digital element, I think it just naturally takes you out, and you don’t want to do that. There’s a guy in there (and) I think again, it adds to your curiosity and your imagination (since) you project who’s inside there, I think.”

“Oddly enough when you take it, stretch it out and look at them,” he continued, returning to the topic of the Don Post masks whose natural decomposition assisted him in creating his modern take on Myers, “they organically had this old age kind of wrinkle here and sag there. The latex warped and gravity kind of took over, just like a human face would. We really liked that and tried to incorporate that into it without it looking like old age makeup (because we) didn’t want that to read through, but we definitely wanted it to look forty-years old. But the key concept was form. It had to have that original form. Without the original form of the Michael Myers mask, that Kirk-esque thing, the way the dirt was smudged on the nose and lips, and with the eyes kind of warped down, (which) gave it that kind of tragic, lifeless kitty-cat face, without that you don’t have Michael Myers. It needed to look aged and dirty with all of the oil and soot and all the mileage that it had. And again, a lot of thought was put into it. I’m hoping that people see that and that they like it.”

Of its practicality, “The mask has been the most challenging thing,” Nelson allowed, “and having that eye scar has created challenges because Jim can’t see through (the prosthetic) as it covers his eye completely. So he’s got one eye he can see out of (but he’s still) doing a fantastic job. His movements, and (just) the way he moves? I think people are going to be very happy.”

As for how many new Myers masks were created for the production (collectors take note), “There are actually five,” revealed Nelson. “One that Nick wears, one stunt (mask), two for Jim and one that’s used for prop scenes. They all look the same. It’s just that they’re used for different things. I wanted to have that freedom.”

“(There are) a lot of kills!” he stated. “There are certain things that happen to some of the characters that we can’t achieve with an actor, so we’ve created some amazing super life-like dummies for a couple of the victims that are a little accentuated and stylized because again, we wanted all the effects and make-up effects to be something you’ll remember. They’re all shot so beautifully and dark and moody. We wanted all those things to be stylized and postcard-like because that was the beauty of those movies in the 70s and especially (was with) Halloween. You remember those images. They’re images you can’t forget, and that’s why they’ve lasted all these years, and we wanted to try and do that. Yeah, so there’s blood and slashes and victims and a couple of really hardcore ones that I’m not going to reveal.”

Universal Pictures will release Halloween worldwide on October 19, 2018.