| Halloween H2O History: After the not so good performance of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers at the box office, Dimension Films was scared of another sequel. That is, until they released a film entitled Scream, writen by new man Kevin Williamson the film made millions of dollars at the box office. The self-referential "hip" horror hit appealed to many youngsters and other audiences, who all flocked to see the film, which dealt with insane teenagers calling up acquaintances with horror film trivia and then killing them. The film featured many popular faces from hit TV shows Including Courteney Cox From Friends and Drew Barrymore, which obviously contributed to its success, and was directed by horror master Wes Craven. It was released in late 1996 and gained surprisingly good reviews and outstanding box office numbers. It had made horror films cool again, reminding people of the names Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Kreuger, and their respective film franchises. The success of this derivative film got Dimension thinking about continuing the Halloween series. Daniel Farrands had already turned in a treatment with the title of "Michael Myers: Lord of the Dead", but didn't really want to be involved in another sequel for fear that it would be ruined again. Nightfall Productions and the Akkads were still legally in partial control of the series, so everything seemed in place. Executives began reviewing treatments and scripts from various writers, and several fans wrote their own sequel scripts and made futile attempts to get the producers to recognize them. In mid 1997 the rumour leaked out that the executives were considering a treatment that had Michael Myers stalking people in the big city of Chicago, removing from his former small-city stalking grounds. But this idea was met with an uproar from fans, and several petitions were sent in pleading the producers not to mimic the fate of the "Friday the 13th" films ("Jason Takes Manhattan" had practically killed that previously successful series). And so the producers backed off, and the next idea tossed around was to bring back the original scream queen, Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis said early on that she would not be involved in another "Halloween" film if it was not directed by John Carpenter. Carpenter, who had previously divorced himself from the series, said that he would helm the project only if the script was good. And so a popular writer went to work on his own treatment for "Halloween 7" -- you guessed it, Kevin Williamson, writer of the successful Scream and Scream 2. He met with Jamie Lee Curtis and they threw around some ideas, at which point Curtis began thinking she might do the film even if Carpenter was not involved. Williamson prepared a Seven page Treatment as a favor to Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, and without hesitation another writer was hired to write a screenplay for it. The writer eventually hired was Robert Zappia, who took Williamson's idea of Laurie Strode living somewhere else under a different name and was now the headmistress of a private school, and some other elements , and based a whole new story and screenplay on them. Writer Matt Greenberg was later hired to iron out some elements of the script. Once this was done and Jamie Lee Curtis approved, it was on to hiring the cast and crew. Steve Miner, who had directed "Friday the 13th Part 2" and "Part 3", was soon hired to helm the new picture. And a cast was promptly assembled made up of "hip young stars" to back up Curtis. These included several new pretty teen faces and other stars from popular TV shows. They were all thrown into the script and a new stuntman, Chris Durand, was hired to play The Shape, stalking after Laurie without hesitation. The result is a figure that does not look at all like the aging person Myers is supposed to be, and therefore leads me and several other fans to believe that it was not really Michael behind the mask. Nevertheless, the film was completed within three months from January 1998, and composer John Ottman was hired to compose a new score that was an orchestral departure from the synthesizer days of Alan Howarth. Ottman, however, eventually found himself jipped when the execs made the decision to incorporate several musical pieces from the film -- you guessed it, Scream. This led to the credit "Additional Music by Marco Beltrami". Several cues from Beltrami's original soundtrack for Scream were used as cues in the new Hallloween film, therefore creating a confusion over which pieces were the product of the hired composer and which were pieces from another Dimension film. More on the soundtrack later. The execs at Dimension decided on a mid-August release date for the film, which was to be titled "Halloween: H2O - 20 Years Later". The film was released and garnered box office success and better reviews than the last installment, when it in fact had less substance than any of its predecessors. The early release date eventually caused the film to disappear from theaters even before Halloween, which was defeating the whole purpose of the films in the first place! Sadly, audiences and even many fans were impressed with Halloween: H2O, which suffered greatly from the loss of Donald Pleasence. The producers opted not to explain any mysteries of Part 6 and instead show a bunch of teen face being systematically slashed by a skinny guy in a mask dorkier and less scary than the original. |
