These Halloween Franchise Secrets Really Are Lurking Behind You – E! Online
Jamie Lee Curtis Reveals the ONE Item She Kept From Halloween
It’s hard to believe the Halloween saga ended for good with Halloween Ends.
But Michael Myers is off the streets for now, Jamie Lee Curtis‘ Laurie Strode having finally taken him down in the 2022 slasher sequel, 44 years after he first terrorized the only responsible babysitter in Haddonfield on All Hallows’ Eve.
But while you’ll have to rely on repeat viewings to relive those chills, you do have many, many Halloween incarnations and installments to choose from, Halloween Ends having capped off a trilogy that was filmmaker David Gordon Green‘s answer to the John Carpenter-directed original from 1978.
“They didn’t mention a trilogy, they mentioned one movie,” Curtis told E! News in July 2022 about agreeing to revisit her iconic final girl role in 2018’s Halloween, which begs audiences to forget the seven films (plus the Rob Zombie-directed 2007 remake and 2009 sequel) released in the interim.
Contractual minutiae aside, “that was a very freeing experience,” Curtis continued, crediting Green’s approach behind the camera—and the film’s unequivocal financial success—for jolting her own creative spirit back to life. “Getting a taste of the way David worked was like [remembering], ‘Oh, s–t! This is fun!'”
Theatergoers certainly appreciated it, scaring up $256 million at the worldwide box office. So she dutifully reteamed with Green for 2021’s Halloween Kills and then in 2022—albeit four years later for Laurie in the cinematic timeline—for Halloween Ends.
Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images
But while blockbuster franchises, much like horror movie villains, are hard to kill, our heroine considered the latest film to be her grand finale.
“I had not wanted to mentally think about it. Then all of a sudden I started really thinking about it,” Curtis told E! of playing Laurie for the last time. “Saying goodbye to Laurie Strode, to say goodbye to the fans who love Laurie Strode” and to countless others who’ve been essential to this journey, she added, “it’s going to be sad. I guarantee you, end of next week, maybe over the weekend, there’s going to be a day where I’m just going to be a puddle.”
Little did she know that she’d soon be an awards season fixture, the Everything Everywhere All at Once star winning her first Oscar in 2023 and then an Emmy in 2024 for The Bear. And, while this brand of horror is behind her, she’s got a Freakier Friday in her future.
But we dealt with the end of Curtis’ Halloween era by diving into the bowels of the film’s lore to explore how the franchise came to be and why an almost unstoppable man-demon in coveralls and a white mask has remained so scary for 46 years. Here’s what we found out:
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(Originally published Oct. 14, 2022, at 4 a.m. PT)