Jake Gyllenhaal Is Responsible For 'Halloween' Casting, Danny McBride Wanted Back-To-Back Sequels And Other New Details Revealed

I don't know about you, but I'm still buzzing about last week's exciting Halloween reboot trailer. October can't get here soon enough. If, like me, you're hungry for even more Halloween treats, some new details about the reboot have been revealed by the cast and crew.

According to a new story in Variety, we have an unlikely source to thank for bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back to the Halloween franchise: Jake Gyllenhaal. Gyllenhaal is a family friend of Curtis', and the tracked down Curtis while she was on vacation and urged her to take a call from Halloween reboot director David Gordon Green. Gyllenhaal and Green have a working relationship – the actor appeared in Green's recent film Stronger. Curtis agreed to take Green's call, and the rest is history.

As Curtis tells it, she and Green hit it off immediately, and Green reminded her of original Halloween director John Carpenter. "They're both laid back and don't take themselves too seriously," Curtis said.

This isn't the first time Curtis returned to the Halloween franchise. She appeared in Halloween 2 and Halloween: H20, and had a cameo in the terrible Halloween: Resurrection. Curtis doesn't acknowledge Resurrection at all to Variety, but she does offer an amusing anecdote related to H2o:

"H20 started out with best intentions, but it ended up being a money gig...The film had some good things in it. It talked about alcoholism and trauma, but I ended up really doing it for the paycheck."

Danny McBride co-wrote the Halloween reboot script with David Gordon Green and Jeff Fradley, but at one point, he considered writing multiple films. Green told EW:

"We were going to shoot two of them back-to-back...Then we were like, Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves. This could come out, and everyone could hate us, and we'd never work again. So, let's not have to sit around for a year while we wait for another movie to come out that we know people aren't going to like. So, we were like, Let's learn from this, and see what works, and what doesn't. But we definitely have an idea of where we would go [with] this branch of the story and hopefully we get a chance to do it."

As much as I love the Halloween franchise, a part of me wants this new film to be the official ending. I want the series to go out on a high note, and adding more sequels runs the risk of mucking that up. That said, if they do end up making more Halloween movies, I won't complain too much.

In a lengthy interview with Halloweenmovies.com, Curtis says that one main theme that drew her to the new Halloween is trauma. "I have a friend of mine who is a doctor, a neuropsychologist, and they are studying stress and trauma now in children," the once and future Laurie Strode says. "Whatever the trauma, be it abuse, physical or emotional violence, whatever it is, the effect changes your brain chemistry, so for me what's crucial is what level that trauma had on this character, who is now fifty-eight years old. And that trauma for her is this perseverating sense of eventuality that Michael will come back, and that every day of her life has been in preparation for that meeting." Curtis adds:

"[Laurie] lives alone...She has tried to live in society but society has not been welcoming. There weren't a lot of mental health professionals helping this young woman, so she banged her way into her life...This is a woman who knows exactly where Michael is and she knows (what he's capable of), even though [others] are convinced that he's somebody who they can maybe manage, work with through drugs, rehabilitate, and all of the rest of it. She is the only one who knows exactly who he is, and that's who we find."

Halloween opens on October 19, 2018.