It’s common knowledge that Michael Dougherty’s Trick ‘r Treat began as Season’s Greetings, an animated short from Dougherty that first introduced Sam. But did you know that Dougherty hammered out the script for Trick ‘r Treat in the late ’90s… and got some of the biggest names in horror on board to direct?!
Speaking with Mick Garris on the podcast Post Mortem this week, Dougherty relayed the history of Trick ‘r Treat, dropping the insane reveal about the project’s origin.
“One of the first people I ever sent [Season’s Greetings] to was Stan Winston. Surprisingly, he wrote back,” Dougherty explained to Garris. “He said, ‘Saw the short, loved it, if you’re ever in LA, let me know.’ So I booked a flight to Los Angeles. He said, ‘Listen. You need to be making movies. I was an animator at Nickelodeon at the time.”
Winston, Dougherty recalls, nudged him to write a spec script in 1999.
“So I cheated. I took two short stories that I had written in college – they just happened to be set on Halloween night,” he continued. “So I figured, I can always write two additional ones. So I just took these four short stories, set them on Halloween night, smashed them together and said, ‘Here’s my spec script.’ And Stan was the first one to read that. He said, ‘There’s really something here and I’d love to produce this.’”
“But the way he wanted to do it was traditional anthology, where you go out and get a director for each one. So he assembled, at the time, George Romero, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper. What a lineup, right? Took it out… nobody wanted to touch it.”
Eventually, years later, Legendary/Warner Bros. picked up the script, and by that point Dougherty had enough experience that he agreed to direct the film himself.
Yes, Trick ‘r Treat was almost the ultimate “masters of horror” anthology film, which would’ve been truly awesome. Then again, it’s hard to imagine the film directed by anyone but Dougherty, as his passion and love for Halloween bleeds through every frame. Proof that sometimes, things work out the way they’re supposed to.
