Its been an interesting few days as two long running film franchises both announced two new sequels and the return of two memorable female characters. Yes – both Laurie Strode and Sarah Connor are set to make comebacks in sequels to the Halloween and Terminator film franchises and both played by their original actresses too as Jamie Lee Curtis and Linda Hamilton have agreed to appear in their respective roles.
But wait a second, isn’t there a slight problem here? I mean both of the characters are dead. Laurie was killed at the start of Halloween: Resurrection – in fact Jamie Lee Curtis only agreed to be in the film if they finally killed her character off. She was stabbed in the back and thrown off a roof by Michael Myers.
Sarah Connor was killed off screen for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine where it is revealed that she died in 1997 from acute myeloid leukemia and was cremated in Mexico after using her casket to hide a cache of weapons.
Yeah, they dead alright. So how can they be in new sequels?
Well the first announcement was made when writer/prouder Jason Blum made this Twitter post which Jamie Lee Curtis herself later confirmed when she Tweeted…
“Same porch. Same clothes. Same issues. 40 years later. Headed back to Haddonfield one last time for Halloween. Release date 10/19/18.”
The film is said to be directed by David Gordon Green with original Halloween creator/writer/director, John Carpenter also on board as an executive producer, consultant and possibly provide the music too. Little is known about the film right now but it has been stated that it won’t be a reboot (as some sites are erroneously reporting), in fact to get around the fact that Laurie Strode is dead – the film is said to be a direct sequel Halloween II from 1981 that’ll ignore all the other films in the series… so a ‘proper’ Halloween III if you will and a celebration to mark the 40th anniversary of the original 1978 picture.
As a side note: I love the real Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Awesome flick.
And it seems that creating sequels that ignore other films in the series is becoming a trend as that is exactly how they are bringing Sarah Connor back from the dead too. The rights to the Terminator franchise will revert back to the franchise’s creator (if you ignore Harlan Ellison) James Cameron in 2019 and he’s already planning on making more movies as The Hollywood Reporter has revealed. This new Terminator flick will be a sequel to 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day that (just like the new Halloween) ignores all the other films in the franchise.
Note I wrote “making more movies”, plural. Yes, Cameron has said he’d like to make a trilogy of new Terminator films. At this point I’d also like to bring up that both Terminator Salvation and Terminator Genisys were planed as starts to new trilogies too and look how that turned out…
But its not just Linda Hamilton who had agreed to come back for the new sequel as the main man himself Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed on the be in the new film too. Said to be directed by Tim Miller of Deadpool fame with Cameron as writer/producer and he had this to say about the movie…
“We’re starting a search for an 18-something woman to be the new centrepiece of the new story. We still fold time. We will have characters from the future and the present. There will be mostly new characters, but we’ll have Arnold and Linda’s characters to anchor it.”
No release date has been announced but (as previously mentioned) the rights to the franchise do not return to Cameron until 2019 – so I’d guess either a 2019 or 2020 release would sound about right.
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