It was never guaranteed that Halloween was going to have a sequel. When it was released in 1978, sequels were much more of a rarity. The eras of the Universal and Hammer films had come and gone, so horror franchises as we think of them were almost non-existent. This, of course, was the calm before the storm for studio franchises in general. Colossal hits like Jaws, Star Wars and Superman had sequels either released or in production by the end of the decade. Producer Irwin Yablans never seemed to care about the rarity of the independent horror sequel, believing early on that if Halloween was successful, he would want to capitalize on that success, which certainly makes sense from a business perspective.
Of course, Halloween wasn’t a colossal hit right away. Far from it, in fact. As many involved have famously said, it pretty much bombed when it first opened and was met with mostly negative reviews. Its success happened slowly, little by little, through word of mouth, to the point that most people—especially John Carpenter, who had already moved on assuming it had come and gone—were incredibly surprised to hear how well it was doing.
It looks like sometime during that peak of box office success with 1979 re-releases and reviews that actually saw the film for the genuinely effective chiller that it was, that talk began of a sequel. Initially, John Carpenter was courted to direct, which only makes sense. He was a young working director. Even the original Halloween was simply a gig for him. He wasn’t sold on the idea of returning to something he had just done, at least as a director, and so he went on to helm Elvis and The Fog instead. But of course, he and Debra Hill agreed to write and produce the film, even if Carpenter didn’t direct it.
The rest, you’d think, would be history. We know John Carpenter and Debra Hill wrote Halloween II and we know that Carpenter didn’t direct it, passing the torch to Rick Rosenthal instead. That all matches up with the sequel as we know it. Apparently, though, sometime during that early stage of development, there was a detour that is—by all accounts—incredibly intriguing.
In the Monster Invasion for Fangoria #7, a blurb noted that Carpenter and Hill were at work on the screenplay for Halloween II, though the plot setup that’s given is completely different from the film we eventually got. This blurb described Halloween II as being set years after the events of the original, with a much more cautious Laurie Strode now living in a high-rise apartment with incredibly tight security.
Of course, for Fango fans, the Monster Invasion was always notorious for dropping details on movies that never happened or turned out completely different, so this proposed Halloween II is in good company. Usually, that wasn’t the fault of Fangoria so much as it had to do with movies going through drastic changes, especially in early development. At the time, Debra Hill confirmed that this was a plan, at least for a while. In fact, not only were they toying with the idea of Halloween II in a high-rise, but they planned to shoot the film in 3D. Interestingly enough, the 3D concept would be revisited decades later with the also-unmade Todd Farmer/Patrick Lussier Halloween 3D, a planned sequel to the two Rob Zombie films.
Irwin Yablans also confirmed in an interview in Fangoria#8, that this was a plan for the sequel. At the time of that 1980 interview, it seemed like the only plan, and it most certainly appears that he was the one behind this particular concept in the first place. He also added that the sequel would not be set in Haddonfield and would instead see Laurie in a new town several years later, and that Donald Pleasence would return as Loomis. Whether or not he would have been living in the apartment building as well is unclear.
Beyond that, almost nothing is known about the project except that it never happened, that they couldn’t break the story from that initial hook and instead made the decision to set the sequel moments after the original film, rather than years. Still, there are some incredibly interesting things to be found just in the concept alone. First and foremost, we have to address how close this sounds to a movie that Carpenter had already made. Just before filming Halloween, Carpenter directed the TV horror film Someone’s Watching Me, which was essentially an update of Rear Window for the late ‘70s. It centered on a woman being stalked by a killer in a high-rise apartment building.
It’s a little surprising that Carpenter would not only want to tackle this concept having already done it, but that he would try to do it so soon after. This is purely speculation, of course, but there could be a couple of reasons for that. The first might be that—while Halloween was certainly a cheap and fast independent movie—Someone’s Watching Me was a TV film on a very limited budget and schedule, and it’s possible that he felt there was a way to improve upon the concept and what he’d already done in this potential sequel. Having said that, Someone’s Watching Me is definitely one of the director’s most underrated efforts and everyone should check it out if they haven’t seen it.
The other train of thought could be that Carpenter has always been extremely vocal about never being all that enthusiastic about making a sequel to Halloween in the first place. It’s entirely possible that, not being all that excited about it, he just wanted to return to a concept he had already made and made pretty well. As evidenced by both screenplays for Halloween and Halloween II, Carpenter is a very cinematically minded writer. Having just directed Someone’s Watching Me, it’s possible that he landed on a concept that he had just shot successfully, that he knew how to troubleshoot so that he could help the new director out if they needed it. But of course, we have no idea for sure.
It’s also possible that this version of the story never evolved beyond Yablans’ initial idea at all. When asked about the high-rise plot synopsis in Fangoria #14, Carpenter shot it down—not as a rumor, but as simply saying that his script took a different approach from the previous version and would be set on the same night as the original film.
As for the 3D element, that’s not all that surprising as it was just seeing a surge in popularity at the time, though it wouldn’t really be utilized as much in the genre until around 1982/1983 with features like Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3D and Friday the 13th Part 3D. Had it been made, Halloween II in 3D would have beaten all of those sequels to the punch. At the time it was in production, the 3D resurgence had only begun with less remembered movies like Comin’ At Ya. In an interview in Fangoria #15, Hill said, “We investigated a number of 3-D processes for Halloween, but they were far too expensive for this particular project. Also, most of the projects we do involve a lot of night shooting—evil lurks at night. It’s hard to do that in 3-D.”
In that same interview, Hill also revealed that she herself was courted to direct the film before deciding against it. According to Fangoria #15, she said, “I didn’t really want to start with a sequel to a John Carpenter film. I’d like to start with an original.” Halloween’s production designer/editor Tommy Lee Wallace was also approached by Carpenter and Hill to direct, but wound up turning it down and directed the next sequel instead.
Most surprisingly, though, is how similar this concept sounds to the Halloween sequel we just received last year, especially going off the emphasis that the story was meant to take place years later. Whether Laurie would have been hiding out from Michael or waiting for him, it clearly suggests a story of someone deeply affected by trauma only to have the face of their trauma return for them.
In fact, it almost sounds like the inverse of 2018’s Halloween, because that film showcased a beaten-down Laurie defined by her fear who was taking absolutely no chances, fortifying her house and arming herself to the teeth. From the sound of it, it seems as if this incarnation of Laurie would have instead relied on the security of the building to protect her—which would obviously fail, one can assume—before being drawn into a game of cat-and-mouse once again. Ultimately, we can’t say for sure one way or the other. But while the idea of Michael Myers stalking a high-rise apartment was seriously considered, it does not appear that it was ever actually written.
Nonetheless, it’s fun to speculate on an entirely different version of Halloween II from what we eventually got, as much a fan of that movie as I actually am. There’s hardly any concrete information on it, so it allows the imagination to run wild with possibilities. It’s far from the first sequel even in this franchise to completely scrap one concept in favor of another. Dennis Etchison’s script for Halloween 4 is a part of Halloween history at this point, and a script also leaked some time ago for Halloween 666: The Origin by Phil Rosenberg.
Eventually, Carpenter and Hill went back to the drawing board and decided the easiest way to carry on the Halloween story was simply to pick up from the moment the first film ended. No matter what we could have seen, it wound up being a smart choice, with the audience dropped back into that fateful night, feeling as though no time had passed at all. Few sequels had ever done that before, and many sequels since have tried to copy that template, with varying results.
