With San Diego Comic Con on the horizon, we’re expecting some goodies this week from David Gordon Green‘s Halloween, potentially new images or even a new trailer. In the meantime, Gordon Green, who co-wrote the script with Danny McBride, sat down with THR to talk about the long road that led to a direct sequel to John Carpenter’s original classic.

According to Gordon Green, that wasn’t *always* the plan.

“It was probably eight months of 80 drafts, exploring different ways we could go and following different characters,” the Pineapple Express director explained. “Then we started casting it and we learned Jamie Lee [Curtis] wanted to be in it. So then we geeked out and wanted to beef up the Laurie Strode character. All of a sudden people started showing interest and so our opportunities started to expand even while we’re shooting the film. Every Saturday was rewrites for Sunday rehearsals so that I could feed off of what we learned that week or for what an actor’s idea might have been or a skill set that we didn’t know we had in front of us. So we were writing up until the very last week of production.”

Gordon Green continued, “We started incorporating all the follow-ups and then it got overwhelming trying to engineer something that made sense. Some of the plot points became a little stretched thin as the franchise went on. And so ultimately finding those frustrations, [Danny] McBride came to me and just said, “What’s the Michael Myers movie that you really want to see?” Halloween I was, to me, the most pure and, in a lot of ways, the most simple. I get the real connection with the terror of a movie that isn’t so lost in its own mythology.”

“Once we kind of had a concept of eliminating Halloween 2 and beyond, that’s when we went over to Carpenter’s house, which was a lovely picnic, and nervously presented our ideas to him. Through the course of that very suspicious conversation, [we] saw him go from cross-eyed to big smiles and then that gave us the confidence to move forward pretty quickly and then try to get Jamie Lee Curtis, [original star Nick Castle] and Carpenter himself to do the music. The next wave of ambition kicked in once we, as I like to say, we kissed the ring of the Godfather and he gave us the thumbs up.”

In this year’s Halloween…

“Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) comes to her final confrontation with Michael Myers, who has haunted her since she narrowly escaped his killing spree on Halloween night four decades ago.”

“A British documentary crew comes to the States to visit Michael in prison for a retrospective of the maniac’s night of terror — but their project becomes way more interesting when Myers escapes custody, retrieves his signature mask and seeks revenge on Laurie, with others naturally being part of his impressive career body count along the way.

In the decades following the fateful Halloween night that forever altered the former babysitter’s life, Laurie has armed and prepped herself for Michael’s inevitable return — to the detriment of her family, including daughter Karen and granddaughter Allyson.”

Judy Greer plays Karen Strode, Laurie’s daughter, while Andi Matichak landed the coveted role of the film’s young lead (daughter to Greer and granddaughter to Curtis).

Nick Castle will return to the role of Michael Myers, while stunt performer and actor James Jude Courtney has also been cast to play Myers.

The cast also includes Virginia “Ginny” Gardner (Project Almanac, Marvel’s “Runaways”), Miles Robbins (Mozart in the Jungle, My Friend Dahmer), Dylan Arnold (Mudbound, Laggies, When We Rise), and Drew Scheid (“Stranger Things”, The War with Grandpa). They will be playing the friends of Matichak’s Allyson.

Michael returns to Haddonfield on October 19, 2018.