It took 8 months and about 80 drafts for David Gordon Green, Danny McBride, and Jeff Fradley to nail the script for 2018’s most anticipated horror movie, Halloween. A direct continuation of John Carpenter’s beloved 1978 classic, the screenwriters boldly opted to ignore all subsequent sequels to go back to the roots of what made The Shape so scary. Considering just how off the rails the continuity got between seven sequels and two Rob Zombie remakes, it’s a clever choice. And that doesn’t even count the many scripts that went unused, which would’ve taken the franchise into much stranger territory. While we wait for Laurie Strode’s final battle with Michael Myers, we look back at five Halloween sequels that almost came to pass.

Halloween 666: The Origin

The initial script for the sixth entry in the Halloween series was rumored to have angered Moustapha Akkad so badly that he threw it across the room. Perhaps a large part of that was due to this iteration of Michael Myers being a homeless hobo squatting at the local Haddonfield homeless shelter. Tommy Doyle is still present in this version, but news reporter Dana takes center stage as the protagonist and long-lost sibling to Michael Myers. As for the cult of Thorn? It didn’t exist in this draft.

Halloween 3D

This almost sequel would have picked up right at the end of Rob Zombie’s Halloween II, well, more like 5 minutes before it ended, layering in new events from that fateful night and then skipping ahead to one year later. Written by Todd Farmer (Jason X, Drive Angry), Halloween 3D was meant to bridge Zombie’s take on Michael Myers back to Carpenter’s original vision. As the title suggests, this sequel would have included 3D elements like Drive Angry and My Bloody Valentine 3D, both directed by Farmer collaborator Patrick Lussier. Farmer completed the script in 2009, and it came close to getting made but never quite found the financing and time needed.

Halloween IV

After being tapped by John Carpenter and Debra Hill to write the novelizations for Halloween II and Halloween III, writer Dennis Etchison was asked by the pair to pen the script for Halloween IV. Etchison’s script was set 10 years after the events of Halloween II and would follow teens Lindsay Wallace and Tommy Doyle, the two children in Laurie Strode’s care from the first film. Haddonfield had long since banned Halloween as a holiday, with repression a central theme in the story. This version of the sequel wasn’t made, though, as Carpenter and Hill sold their interests in the franchise with Etchison’s script not part of their final deal.

Halloween 5: The Revenge of…Jamie Lloyd?

Halloween 5 was rushed into production without a completed script, thanks to the surprise success of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. There were several rejected pitches, including one by director Dominique Othenin-Girard’s friend Robert Harders, who wanted to make Michael Myers a sympathetic Frankenstein’s creature-like character. The first actual draft was written by Shem Bitterman, who wrote a continuation of the cliffhanger ending of part 4. In other words, the focus of this sequel was on Jamie Lloyd and her new lust for murder after stabbing her adoptive mother in the previous film. Even Donald Pleasance and Danielle Harris thought this was where the story would head, but producer Moustapha Akkad and Ohtenin-Girard scrapped the script and brought in Michael Jacobs to write a new script.

Halloween vs Hellraiser

Two years ago, an interview with Pinhead actor Doug Bradley revealed that we very nearly received a Michael Myers meets Cenobites crossover event. Right around the time Freddy vs Jason was in production, Dimension Films was presented with not one but two scripts for the proposed feature. They rejected both, predicting Freddy vs Jason would bomb. When it didn’t, they quickly changed their mind. The only problem? Akkad regained rights to the Halloween sequels and put an end to the crossover. It also likely didn’t help that fan reception for the concept was negative.