[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Halloween Kills.]
If you've seen Halloween Kills, you know it picks up immediately where David Gordon Green's 2018 Halloween left off, which left the creative team with one massive Laurie Strode problem. Jamie Lee Curtis' iconic slasher survivor had just taken a fairly large kitchen knife straight to the guts, and the genuinely graphic surgery to save her life in Halloween Kills means Laurie realistically needs to be confined to a hospital bed for the entire film. It's a bit of a bummer, and Green seems well aware of it. When Collider's Steve Weintraub sat down with the filmmaker to discuss Halloween Kills, Green revealed its sequel, the trilogy-capper Halloween Ends, has a built-in way to include Laurie: a four-year time jump.
"There is a time jump. It gets back onto a contemporary timeline, so it'll jump four years," Green told us, noting that Halloween Ends heads into production in January of 2022. The director continued, discussing the similar challenges that come with writing a realistic arc for the emotionless Michael Myers (James Jude Courtney) while also keeping the franchise's human face out of the action.
"That's a big thing. A lot of this movie was tricky, not only in writing the shape and his lack of character, but keeping her in a realistic scenario. There's a graphic surgery that we film of her. Then once you've done that, she's not going to be doing a lot of Kung Fu so."
Getting Laurie more involved isn't, uh, the only challenge facing Halloween Ends. There's one heck of a mystifying cliffhanger at the tail end of Halloween Kills, as Michael Myers receives an unholy ass-kicking from half the population of Haddonfield, gets shot several times before a knife and baseball bat finish the job, and then...gets back up, good as new. The ending opens up new questions for the rebooted trilogy, mostly about whether things just got a whole lot more overtly supernatural like they did in the much-maligned one-two punch of Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers? Green remained tight-lipped about that finale, but he did reveal some new faces would be joining him and Danny McBride on script duty to figure it out. Halloween Ends will be co-written by Paul Logan (Manglehorn) and Chris Bernier (The House: A Hulu Halloween Anthology), who Green describes simply as "huge Halloween fans."
"We always try to bring new voices into the mix. They poke holes in our story and they played devil's advocate and they bring new ideas and new reference points. This weekend, I was rampaging on a new pass of it, but we start prep in two weeks. So they're wanting me to lock in something more definitive, which I think we'll be in good shape for that to shoot in January...The script's in great shape. It's just a matter of committing to certain paths and characters and constructing new set pieces."
As for after Halloween Ends? Green has no clue; he's looking at his work as one, contained four-part story—yes, he's including John Carpenter's original Halloween in there and understands how that sounds—and would like his ending to remain for just a bit before someone inevitably digs Michael and Laurie back up.
"My ego says create something that is a four-part series beginning with Carpenter's, 1978 film, and then our follow-up trilogy. I'm sure the mythology takes over and Michael and Laurie will emerge in some new capacity with some new filmmaker, storyteller behind them. But for me, I'll be done. I hope they'll take a little time off before they resuscitate it. But that's just my ego."
Check out exactly what Green had to say in the player above. Halloween Kills is currently in theaters and available to stream on Peacock.