Summary
- Michael Myers’ longevity as a horror icon can be attributed to his versatility as a character, catering to different preferences of audiences.
- Even though the Halloween franchise seemingly concluded with Halloween Ends, there are plans for more projects featuring Michael Myers.
- Due to the TV rights being secured by Miramax, it is guaranteed that Michael Myers will continue to make appearances in some way or another.
When John Carpenter created The Shape, the supernatural being that would go on to become better known as Michael Myers, he could not have envisioned that the movie villain would become one of the biggest horror icons of all time. In a recent New York Comic-Con appearance, the legendary director explained why he believes the character of Michael Myers has proven to be “unkillable”.
In 1978’s Halloween, Michael Myers is portrayed as a stalking, lurking killer, and the movie is all about building suspense, rather than racking up an impressive body count. However, in the most recent Halloween trilogy from Blumhouse and David Gordon Green, Myers became an almost unstoppable killing machine. Of course, while Halloween Ends brought the franchise to a “definitive” close, more Halloween projects, both on the big and small screen, are in consideration.
When it comes to the reason for Myer’s inability to be permanently put in the ground, Carpenter has a simple explanation for the character’s longevity. He told the NYCC panel (via ScreenRant):
“Well, I’ll tell you what, he’s an all-purpose character. If you want the first movie, you’ve got that. If you want him to be able to kill all the time, you’ve got that. The only other all-purpose monster is Godzilla.”
In Halloween Ends, Michael Myers meets a grizzly end by being fed through a mulching machine, but even this doesn’t really signify the end of the character or the franchise by a long way.
How Can the Halloween Franchise Continue?
From its low-budget, low-gore origins in 1978, Halloween has grown into a franchise based around one thing; Michael Myers. However, after 13 movies, the fascination with the Shatner-masked villain is still going strong – despite some horrifying reviews for many of the entries in the franchise.
Over the course of the franchise, the character of Michael Myers has already been rebooted once, in Rob Zombie’s movies, and the storylines created in Halloween II and beyond were retconned by Green’s trilogy. In the midst of this, there is also Halloween III: The Season of the Witch to consider – a movie that tested the original plans for the Halloween franchise to be an anthology rather than simply focusing on Myers.
The horror genre very rarely needs a reason to resurrect its most iconic monsters, or even a coherent way of doing so as many Friday the 13th movies have shown. This alone would be enough to ensure that we have not seen the last of Michael Myers and the Halloween franchise, but now Miramax have secured the TV rights to the franchise, which gives them complete control over The Shape, there is now a guarantee that in some way, Michael Myers will return.
Although John Carpenter was not completely satisfied with what Green did with the franchise in his trilogy, it is unlikely that he would want to step into the director’s chair himself for the next iteration. However, he has been hands on with providing music for the franchise, and earns producer credits on many previous movies, so it is still possible that Carpenter will put a touch of something into the future of Michael Myers in his own small way.
