Miramax wins Halloween TV rights, plans some kind of “cinematic universe”

God, where’s Dr. Loomis when you need him? Donald Pleasence has been dead for quite some time, but Hollywood really needs a harried expert in the field of evil to barge into various rooms in a panic and yell about how everyone’s underestimating Michael Myers and they’re all doomed—only, in this case, he should be yelling about the Halloween franchise, which is no less dangerous than Michael himself. And yet, not even a year after David Gordon Green released the divisive Halloween Ends, Miramax has landed the TV rights to Halloween and is planning to make a new TV series that could “potentially launch a cinematic universe” with new movies. But it’s evil incarnate! We should kill it and be done with it!

Of course, the problem with Dr. Loomis is that nobody ever listens to Dr. Loomis, so here we are again. This all comes from Deadline, which says Miramax (which was one of the production companies on Green’s reboot trilogy) won after a “tight race” against A24 and Blumhouse (the other big production company on the trilogy) in order to get these TV rights.

We don’t know what Miramax is planning beyond “making a TV show” and “potentially turning that into a movie,” but it all might be a bit concerning for everyone who is tired of the excessive IP-milking that Hollywood has been desperately doing for the last few… centuries. Maybe it wouldn’t feel so “too soon” if they hadn’t just made three movies that were all about going back to the Halloween basics? Or if those movies had been better?

That all being said, this is an opportunity go back to John Carpenter’s original vision and use the Halloween brand not as a way to tell Michael Myers stories but as a way to tell scary stories that just happen to take place on Halloween. Maybe it could be an anthology, with Michael serving as a Cryptkeeper-style host?