Creepshow: 13 Tales of Terror will be published in hardcover, paperback, and e-book on May 19, 2026 from Monstrous and Evoke Entertainment.

Edited by Bram Stoker Award winner James Aquilone (Kolchak: The Night Stalker), the 260-page book features a lucky 13 original stories inspired by the series.

Contributors include Steve Niles (30 Days of Night), David Avallone (Elvira: Mistress of the Dark), Nancy A. Collins (Swamp Thing), Dennis Crosby (Weird Tales), Keith R.A. DeCandido (Star Trek), Gwendolyn Kiste (The Haunting of Velkwood), Jonathan Maberry (Rot & Ruin), Lisa Morton (Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween), Nick Roberts (The Exorcist’s House), Thomas E. Sniegoski (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Tim Waggoner (Terrifier 3), Simon Bestwick (The Faceless), and Aquilone.

“Each story is a macabre celebration of Creepshow‘s legacy,” said Aquilone. “We’ve assembled a can’t-miss anthology, with morality tales of terror, justice, and cosmic retribution, all told with the Creep’s ghoulish grin.”

Creepshow: 13 Tales of Terror features cover art by Russ Braun (The Boys), and each story is accompanied by full-page art featuring The Creep by EV Cantada.

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The Scribe Awards were presented on stage at SDCC, and Tim Waggoner’s ultra-gory Terrifier 2: The Official Novelization took home the trophy for “Best Adapted Novel”!

From the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, the annual Scribe Awards honor “excellence in the field of writing tie-in fiction for media franchises.”

These works include novels, short stories, audio dramas, and graphic novels tied to licenses of movies and TV shows, as well as video games, comics, songs, and even book series.

In this gruesome novelization of Terrifier 2 from Bloody Disgusting and Titan Books, the nightmarish Art the Clown returns from the dead to continue his murderous and mad spree in the sleepy town of Miles County, one year after they survived the events of Terrifier.

Little do they know the nightmare is about to begin anew…

Resurrected by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and mayhem—setting his sights on the recently bereaved teenager Sienna and her younger brother Jonathan. The streets are about to run with blood, and Sienna must somehow survive this gruesome Halloween night and discover how to defeat a brutal and unforgiving killing machine.

You can see the full list of Scribe Awards 2025 winners here.

Tim Waggoner writes horror, dark fantasy, and media tie-ins, including Supernatural, Kingsman, and Resident Evil. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a two-time winner of the Scribe Award, and a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award.

He teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. 

The post Tim Waggoner’s ‘Terrifier 2’ Novelization Won Best Adapted Novel at This Year’s ‘Scribe Awards’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The upcoming release is part of Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting’s new publishing arm Bloody Press, focused on creating and bringing audiobooks, e-books and print editions to market.

Penned by Tim Waggoner, author of the successful Terrifier 2 novelization, Halloween Kills, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, the Terrifier 3 book will follow the franchise storyline that the film’s writer and director Damien Leone brought to audiences last year.

“We continue to look for new opportunities to reach fans, from novelizations to exclusive t-shirts and collectible merchandise to podcasts,” said Cineverse VP Network Strategy, Tom Owen. “When you can super-serve people who are passionate about iconic horror franchises like Terrifier, it makes it possible not only to drive revenue but to form powerful, lasting connections.”

“It is a thrill to be brought on board to contribute to the world that Damien created and help tell Art and Sienna’s stories in new ways,” said Waggoner. “I can’t wait to share this story with fans.”

Waggoner is a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe Award, and a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. He teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio.

The feature films, Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, are both available for streaming on SCREAMBOX.

Best of all? For a limited time you can get a SCREAMBOX subscription for just $2.99/month for the first three months, so you can watch both Terrifier sequels for just $2.99 now!

Sign up for SCREAMBOX now at the $2.99/month rate and start screaming!

The post Bloody Press Releasing Tim Waggoner’s ‘Terrifier 3’ Novelization This Year appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The stylish Pearl explores the limitations placed on women in the early 1900s while giving us the origin story of a vicious predator. Tim Waggoner continues his novelization of West’s trilogy by playing with the motivations and backstories of this doomed cast of characters. Waggoner’s literary adaptation of X allows us to peer into Pearl’s mind, explaining her practice of targeting victims for her own sexual pleasure. His Pearl adaptation provides an origin for this destructive pattern while exploring the mind of a sexual sadist on the brink of committing her first murder.

We read about the macabre collection Pearl keeps in her room along with her horrific treatment of her sister-in-law’s corpse. We join her husband on his return to the aptly titled Powder Keg Farms and learn why he’s not not exactly surprised by the hideous tableau Pearl has prepared. Along with these terrifying tidbits and grisly details, Waggoner fills in crucial details about Pearl’s doomed family and a hellish life under her mother’s cruel thumb.

Daddy

Pearl lives a lonely life on her parents’ farm, charged with helping to manage the expansive property. Chief among her chores is to help care for her Father (Matthew Sunderland) who has been incapacitated by illness and spends his days languishing in a wheelchair. West implies that his condition is caused by the flu pandemic ravaging the globe, but Waggoner gives us a bit more information. After contracting the dreaded virus, Daddy had a stroke and has since lost the ability to move or speak, though he seems to be fully aware of his surroundings. The formerly jovial man once doted on his only child, but has now become a burden to his wife and daughter. Pearl remembers Daddy discovering her with a lit cigarette in hand and vowing to keep it a secret from his wife. In fact, Daddy often served as a buffer between the house’s two women, frequently smoothing over arguments before they could spiral out of control. Now that he’s unable to intervene, their resentments have reached a boiling point and lead to a deadly confrontation. Though likely inevitable, Pearl’s initial killing spree could be seen as a direct result of her father’s illness. 

Theda’s Child

With her husband Howard (Alistair Sewell) fighting overseas and her community forced to quarantine, Pearl spends most of her time on the farm alone. Her only friends are barnyard animals and an alligator who lives in a nearby pond. She’s named this creature after film star Theda Bara, and frequently brings her the carcasses of animals she kills. When Pearl stumbles upon Theda’s nest, she steals an egg to take back to the barn. West shows Pearl crushing this egg in her palm while imagining her husband exploding on the battle-field—a grotesque depiction of her seething anger—but Waggoner fleshes out this curious move. Pearl plans to watch the egg hatch up close and eventually return the baby alligator to its mother. She’s even picked out a name for the infant—Lillian Gish—and kills one of the family’s sheep to give it a cozy nest. But it’s not long before Pearl realizes she cannot recreate the natural incubator of Theda’s pond and abandons this plan, crushing the egg in an explosion of rage.

Night Visions

Though she is a cold-blooded killer, Pearl becomes an aspirational figure with her frank and shameless expression of sexuality. Shortly after meeting the lonely farmer’s daughter, we watch her ride a scarecrow to climax in the middle of a corn field. She’s just met a handsome Projectionist (David Corenswet) and pictures him in place of the life-sized doll though she is alternately horrified by this nod to infidelity. Her fantasies continue late at night when she sees the Projectionist appear outside her bedroom window. Pearl follows him out to the barn where he’s set up a romantic picnic date and a screening of her favorite film. It’s not until the chorus line features identical Pearls all kicking in unison that she realizes this is only a dream. Through Pearl, West continues his exploration of pornography and horror filtered through a historical lens. During a late night visit to the cinema, the Projectionist plays a salacious reel in which an onscreen man has sex with two women. Riding her bicycle back to the farm, Pearl imagines the scene playing out across the cloudy night sky starring herself, the Projectionist, and her sister-in-law Mitsy (Emma Jenkins-Purro). Climaxing as she rides, this vision brings Pearl the strongest orgasm of her life.

Momma

Though Pearl is a killer in her own right, her mother Ruth (Tandi Wright) emerges as the film’s second villain. This harsh German immigrant insists on strict adherence to her rules and seems to go out of her way to make her daughter’s life miserable. We learn that Ruth does not believe in second helpings and refuses to use her own fancy dining room—adding a poignant touch to Pearl’s final tableau. The would-be star suspects that should Ruth find out about a local dance audition Pearl plans to attend, she would lock her daughter in the cellar. It seems the two have never gotten along and show barely concealed hatred towards each other. At the audition, Pearl spies another mom consoling her devastated daughter and wonders what it would be like to receive maternal love. After her own disastrous audition, Pearl attempts to force this emotional connection. She encircles herself with her mother’s burned and lifeless arms while imagining a miraculously healed Ruth singing a German lullaby to calm her tears. West presents this as a tender yet bizarre moment between a daughter and the mother she killed, but Waggoner adds heartbreaking context. Earlier in the film, Pearl stumbles upon Ruth comforting her husband with this very song. Pearl later uses her corpse to recreate the affection Ruth once gave to her husband but could never bring herself to bestow on her daughter.  

First Kill

Pearl concludes with the titular killer reckoning with her failures and attempting to take control of her limited life. It’s a fascinating character study in sadistic empowerment, but Waggoner makes clear we are also witnessing the making of a murderer. We learn that while our dark heroine has a habit of killing animals, she has never intentionally taken a human life. This all changes when the Projectionist balks at Pearl’s strange behavior and blatant lies about noises in the cellar. Though Pearl has been fantasizing about keeping the dazzling man as a sexual plaything in her family’s bunkhouse—an ominous nod to her future crimes—she becomes enraged when he makes a hasty exit back to his borrowed car. She slowly approaches the Projectionist with a pitchfork, intending to savor each moment of her first kill. After repeatedly stabbing him in the chest, Pearl stands over her former lover with weapon in hand. She relishes the terror she sees on his face before plunging the center tine through his skull. 

A24’s official novelizations of X and Pearl are now available. Look for MaXXXine in early 2025.

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Tim Waggoner kicks off the series with X, a violent homage to Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and the gritty world of exploitation filmmaking. The story’s major beats play out the same—the cast and crew of a low-budget porno meet a pair of murderous octogenarians on a remote Texas farm—but Waggoner sprinkles in fascinating details, creating windows into the private lives of each character. We learn that Bobby-Lynne (Brittany Snow) was once a small town cheerleader, Wayne (Martin Henderson) has a startling lack of business savvy, RJ (Owen Campbell) uses a mental trick to cope with filming his girlfriend’s sex scene, and Lorraine (Jenna Ortega) tends to wear incorrect Day of the Week panties.

While fascinating, these tidbits are merely a fraction of what we learn in Waggoner’s retelling of this deadly night in rural Texas.

Howard enables his wife’s darkness.

When Wayne and his crew first arrive on the property, they immediately encounter a dangerous man. The elderly Howard (Stephen Ure) points a shotgun at his visitor having forgotten about their arrangement to rent out the nearby bunkhouse. Cruel and unforgiving, Howard seems to frighten his wife Pearl (Mia Goth) who tiptoes around the house to avoid sparking his anger. In fact, it’s not until midway through the film that we discover the true driving force behind the couple’s decades-long killing spree.

The insatiable Pearl frequently kills in a fit of passion or rage, then Howard swoops in to clean up the mess. Well aware of his wife’s dark side, he treats Pearl like a goddess and has become an enabler of her grisly crimes. Now that he can no longer meet her sexual needs, Howard imprisons young travelers then delivers them as “gifts” or “playthings” for his sadistic partner. Pearl calls Howard the closest thing to a conscience she’s ever had, but he has no qualms about murdering to please his aging wife. Over the years, he’s learned what type of victim she prefers and knows that an excess of blood will only heighten her excitement.

The man in the cellar died a brutal death.

When darkness falls on the deteriorating farm, Wayne’s cast and crew encounter creatures more dangerous than a shotgun-toting grump. Lorraine wakes to discover her boyfriend missing and steps out into the night to track him down. Instead she finds Howard looking for Pearl and agrees to retrieve a flashlight from the darkened basement. But Howard locks the door behind her, trapping Lorraine in the foul-smelling room. After stumbling around in the musty dark, she is stunned to find a decomposing corpse shackled to the ceiling. Heavy manacles dig into the man’s wrists and ankles and a black cord has been tied around his neck.

West gives us just a glimpse of this unfortunate figure, but Waggoner expands on his grisly demise. With his pants and underwear pooled around his ankles, the man’s genitals have been essentially stripped of skin. Lorraine suspects this was accomplished with steel wool or a cheese grater, before surmising that it might be the result of repeated and brutal sexual assault. What she sees in this dungeon is so upsetting that the terrified girl contemplates dying by suicide rather than becoming the murderous couple’s next sexual toy.

Jackson has been changed by his time as a marine.

As bodies begin to stack up on the farm, Jackson emerges as the remaining cast’s only hope for survival. A former marine, the stoic man mentions his own service in the Marine corps while gently instructing Howard to point his shotgun somewhere else. As the night unfolds, Jackson discovers truth in the aphorism, “a soldier leaves the war, but the war never leaves the soldier.” After months of living on the edge of life and death, he’s become a light sleeper and immediately senses danger in the darkened bunkhouse. Waggoner also explains his curious habit of wandering around in the nude. As a porn actor, Jackson is understandably comfortable showcasing his impressive body, but the former soldier also insists upon securing his environment before bothering to cover himself or put on clothes. He offers to help the man search for his wife out of obligation to fellow members of the corps, remembering unpleasant soldiers from his own platoon.

Unfortunately, Howard has no such compunctions. Before Jackson can confront the old man about a submerged car found while searching the pond, Howard shoots Jackson in the chest. West’s version may be shocking enough, but Waggoner adds insult to injury. Instead of simply dying as a result of the shotgun blast, Jackson falls into the pond and is devoured by Pearl’s pet gator.

Maxine will stop at nothing to survive.

We meet this ragtag group of filmmakers through the eyes of rising starlet Maxine Minx (Goth) and learn that the valuable X-factor she exudes has just as much to do with the way she moves as it does her striking and unusual beauty. But Maxine is not content to rest on her appearance. She takes her rise to stardom seriously, studying industry magazines and modeling her approach to acting after tips and tricks from established stars. Though she believes The Farmer’s Daughters will be her ticket to fame and fortune, she worries about filming so close to him.

West waits until the film’s final moments to make the connection between Maxine’s troubled past and the televangelist who’s strident words pervade the story. But Waggoner’s Maxine hears his voice in her head throughout and constantly tries to push it away. While upsetting to watch her suffer with the remnants of his shameful words, it’s her talent for emotional compartmentalization that helps Maxine survive. She is able to immediately detach from Wayne after his death and uses a mantra learned at her father’s knee to help her survive this farmhouse of horrors.

Pearl targets Maxine from the beginning.

Though Howard appears to be the farm’s most dangerous predator, it’s Pearl who cannot control her lust for blood. West does not reveal his shocking antagonist until halfway through the film, but Waggoner introduces us to the elderly murderer right away while detailing her horrific past and sinister motivations. Spying Maxine from the farmhouse window, Pearl becomes entranced with the young woman’s beauty and immediately vows to possess her. Thanks to Howard disabling the bunkhouse locks, she slips into bed with Maxine and marks her back with RJ’s blood.

In fact, Pearl’s obsession for the entrancing young porn actress is so strong that it causes her to override her better judgment. Howard reminds her that it’s more difficult to kill larger groups and believes they should let Wayne’s cast pass through unscathed. But Pearl is so consumed with Maxine’s X-factor, that she initiates a killing spree that winds up taking her life. 

A24’s official novelization of X is now available. The first installment in the novel trilogy will be followed by prequel Pearl on November 19, and final installment MaXXXine in early 2025.

The post 5 Revelations from the Official Novelization of Mia Goth Horror Movie ‘X’ appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

In this gruesome novelization of the hit horror film, from Tim Waggoner, author of the Halloween Kills and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter novelizations, the nightmarish Art the Clown returns from the dead to continue his murderous and mad spree in the sleepy town of Miles County, one year after they survived the events of Terrifier.

Little do they know the nightmare is about to begin anew…

Resurrected by a sinister entity, Art is back with an appetite for murder and mayhem—setting his sights on the recently bereaved teenager Sienna and her younger brother Jonathan. The streets are about to run with blood, and Sienna must somehow survive this gruesome Halloween night and discover how to defeat a brutal and unforgiving killing machine from beyond her nightmares. 

There’s no stopping Art once his sights are set on you… 

The feature film Terrifier 2 is available for streaming on SCREAMBOX. Like classic horror movie novelizations, the brand new novelization will feature new material not seen in the film!

Terrifier 3 slashes into theaters on October 11, 2024. Looking for Terrifier merch? Head to your local Spirit Halloween for all things Art the Clown.

Tim Waggoner writes horror, dark fantasy, and media tie-ins, including Supernatural, Kingsman, and Resident Evil. He’s a four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award, a one-time winner of the Scribe Award, and a two-time finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award.

He teaches creative writing and composition at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. 

The post The Official ‘Terrifier 2’ Novelization from Bloody Disgusting & Titan Books Is Out Now! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

The novelization trilogy from Bram Stoker award-winning writer Tim Waggoner will be kicking off with the release of the official X novelization on September 24, 2024.

Novelizations of both Pearl and MaXXXine will follow later in 2024 and in 2025.

Here’s the release plan…

• X will be published on September 24th, 2024
• Pearl will follow November 19th, 2024
• MaXXXine is set for release in early 2025

The trilogy begins in 1979, as a group of young filmmakers set out to make an adult film in rural Texas. But when their reclusive, elderly hosts catch them in the act, the cast find themselves fighting for their lives. A24 previews, “Author Tim Waggoner translates West’s vision into pulpy print format with grisly new details drawn from the original screenplay.”

With retro covers and a pocket-sized format, these adaptations pay homage to the beloved movie tie-in paperbacks of the 1980s. Check out the cover artwork for each book up above.

Tim Waggoner is also the writer of our Terrifier 2 novelization, releasing this Halloween.

The post All Three Films in Ti West’s ‘X Trilogy’ Getting Novelizations from A24! appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

But what can we expect from the “Extended Cut”? We have no official details at this time, but David Gordon Green did recently tease that an extended version of the movie with an alternate ending was on the way. That reveal came in a chat with Collider last month.

Gordon Green explained, “There’s an additional scene that we filmed that was scripted. And actually I think is a pretty brilliant scene. So we’re going to do an extended version on the DVD, just so people can see an extended ending that’s different and cool.”

“We ended up lifting it when I became more confident of where we’re going to pick up in the next movie; it didn’t feel authentic to where we’re going to go,” he continues. “It’s part of the movie. It’s just not part of the appropriate momentum of… knowing where we’re going to pick up in [Halloween Ends], which, you’ll know in a year, it wasn’t the right look in the eye that we needed to give the audience.”

In the version of Halloween Kills that’s now playing in theaters and streaming on Peacock, Michael survives a seemingly un-survivable assault from the residents of Haddonfield, massacring the mob and returning to his childhood home. In his deceased sister Judith Myers’s old bedroom, Michael seems to kill Karen Strode, and the film cuts to black from there.

As David Gordon Green notes, an “extended ending” was not only filmed but also originally scripted, and that last bit is interesting to note because writer Tim Waggoner based the official Halloween Kills novelization – which is now available – on the movie’s script. And wouldn’t ya know it, the novelization indeed does have an extended/alternate ending.

Waggoner recently explained to Bloody Disgusting’s Jason Jenkins, “The ending is the same as in the movie, except in the script it goes on just a touch longer. It doesn’t change anything about the ending at all. It just is a little different. It’s just like they ended thirty seconds early or something. Maybe that’ll show up on the special features of the DVD.”

Here’s how the novelization ends, after Michael kills Karen Strode…

Laurie turned and slowly walked toward the front of the recovery room. On the way, she stopped at her bed, reached beneath the blanket, and withdrew the knife that Allyson had left for her. Its solidness felt comforting, reassuring. Holding the blade tight, she continued toward the room’s entrance. A hospital phone was mounted on the wall next to the door. She lifted the receiver, tucked it between her cheek and shoulder, and began pressing digits. She knew Karen’s cell phone number by heart.

*

The Shape stands at his sister’s window as he did so many years ago, blood-splattered mask reflected in the glass before him. He does not see himself, though. He sees something else. Something beyond… something greater. He sees-

A series of musical tones plays then, distracting him. He turns toward the sound, sees the woman – Her daughter – lying dead on the floor, Christmas sweater in tatters, her chest a ragged mess of blood and torn meat. The music is coming from one of her pockets. The Shape tilts his head to the side, considers. The he kneels, reaches into the front pocket of the woman’s jeans with his three-fingered hand, and pulls out her phone. He stands, looks at the display, pushes a button, and raises the device to his head.

*

Laurie was relieved when the call was answered. She was about to speak when she heard heavy breathing on the other end, sick and distorted, as if whoever it was had been seriously injured. This wasn’t Karen. She knew that breathing, knew it as well as her own. She felt a tearing sensation deep inside then, as if a vital piece of her had been suddenly, violently ripped away.

Karen…

Her hand trembled, but when she spoke her voice was as cold as a windswept Arctic plain.

“I’m coming for you, Michael.”

Why would this extra little moment – Laurie declaring that she’s coming for Michael – not fit where Gordon Green is going next with Halloween Ends? Well, that could be because the next movie in the trilogy is going to jump ahead four years, so perhaps Gordon Green felt it best to not set the stage for that final battle so many years before it actually does take place.

This is all speculation on my part, of course, but it seems pretty clear at this point that the extended ending in the book is indeed also the extended ending in this new version of the movie that we’re going to be treated to on the road to Christmas. Which then begs the question: Will the Extended Cut feature even more new footage that we haven’t yet seen?

For starters, we’re hoping to see an additional shot of Michael Myers that was cut from the theatrical/streaming version, notable because it features ’78 star Nick Castle as The Shape.

The post ‘Halloween Kills’ – What Can We Expect from the Extended Cut? The Novelization May Answer That Question appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Characters and situations get fleshed out a bit more in Waggoner’s official novelization, which notably provides a backstory for the ill-fated Anthony Tivoli and touches upon what legacy characters including Tommy Doyle, Lindsey Wallace, and Lonnie Elam have been up to in recent years. And Waggoner also works fun some Easter Eggs into the mix for Halloween fans.

As he explained to BD, “I had two different editors on the project, and one of them was a big Halloween fan. Together, we seeded little Easter eggs throughout the book, just for fun.”

One of those Easter Egg nods is to Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2, with Waggoner making mention of a pizza shop called “White Horse Pizza,” but that’s not even the deepest or most interesting cut for fans of the Halloween franchise. That honor belongs to a nod on page 85, wherein Waggoner makes sure to give the infamous “Cult of Thorn” mythology a little mention.

One of the more polarizing ideas in the franchise’s history, the Cult of Thorn mythology was woven into Halloween 4, Halloween 5, and Halloween 6 as a way to explain Michael’s supernatural powers, but all of those sequels have of course been wiped away by the current timeline. In this timeline, after all, only the original classic remains part of the experience.

Nevertheless, the Halloween Kills novelization reveals that Tommy Doyle (played by Anthony Michael Hall in the movie) has a Cult of Thorn tattoo, just like Halloween 6‘s Michael Myers!

Waggoner writes, “Tommy… in some ways he was the worst of them, including Laurie. Ever since the night that Laurie saved him and Lindsey from Michael, he’d had difficulty controlling his anger. He had a hair-trigger temper, was quick to take offense at any perceived slight, no matter how mild, and he could be irritable, impatient, and impulsive. He’d gotten into a lot of fights in high school, and even more after he’d graduated. He drifted from job to job, unable to hold on to one for any length of time without blowing his top off at someone – usually his boss – or taking a swing at them. He’d gone through a series of relationships, but they never lasted long either. No one wanted to be the partner of someone with such a volatile emotional state.

“… Tommy had been in therapy on and off since his late twenties, and while he’d picked up a lot of psychological tools to help him deal with his anger, it was by no means fully under control. He was so obsessed with Michael and all things Halloween that he’d gotten a tattoo of a Thorn rune on his left arm, and when he was anxious, he rubbed his hand over it subconsciously.”

The book digs no further into the Halloween 6 connection, and doesn’t explain the tattoo for readers unfamiliar with the franchise’s past, but it’s a fun little connection that’s sure to have hardcore fans salivating with theories. Tommy Doyle was of course the central protagonist character in Halloween 6, however he was played by Paul Rudd back then. That version of Tommy Doyle, a character from the original classic, was similarly obsessed with Michael Myers and the Thorn mythology. Does this mean those two versions of Tommy are the same man?

At the end of the day, of course, it’s likely little more than an Easter Egg slipped in by Waggoner. In Halloween Kills, the movie, no such tattoo is ever seen on Tommy Doyle’s arm.

But it sure is fun to think about…

The Halloween Kills novelization is available now. Grab a copy here.

The post The ‘Halloween Kills’ Novelization Drops a Very Unexpected “Cult of Thorn” Connection appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

Joining us to chat about this novelization is Mr. Waggoner himself, who discusses how he came to write for Michael Myers, what extra content we can expect from this telling, and what other horror icons he might still love to write about.

Bloody Disgusting: How was it that this project came about for you? I know that John Passarella had penned the previous Halloween novelization, so was there any talk as to why he didn’t return, or is it that they’re looking for different writers for each outing?

Tim Waggoner: I have no idea, because nobody said anything to me about that. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just are interested in having different writers, but it could have been a schedule conflict.

I had already done a number of tie-ins for Titan Books, who’s the publisher of the Halloween novelizations. I’d done some Supernatural ones for them, and some other movie novelizations too. They just got in contact with my agent and wanted to know if I’d be interested. I was like, Hell yes, I would be interested. And that’s pretty much all there was to it.

BD: What was the adaptation process like for you, taking this pre-existing story from another medium and making it your own?

TW: Like I said, I’ve done four of them and each one’s been different in terms of just how it’s worked out. I’ve gotten scripts in very different ways. For my first novelization, I got photocopies of the script shipped from England. For another one, I had to log into the studio’s intranet, though my login was only good for three days at a time and they didn’t tell me. After three days, it went away and I panicked, but then they gave me access every three days after that. Other ones, it’s on the internet, and it’s fine. Or, you know, maybe they’ll e-mail it to you.

So when I got the access to the Halloween Kills script, first thing I did was print it out just so I can read it and have it to refer to as I was writing.

So I go through and read the script just to get an idea what the story’s like. Then I go through and read it again to look for places where I can add things or expand on things, because movie scripts are not long enough to make a whole novel. They’re like 90 to 120 pages, and there’s just not enough.

That’s part of the fun of reading novelizations anyway, the extra stuff that you don’t get from a movie. So I look for that. Then what I do is, and I just made this technique up, I sit down and I type up all the dialogue onto a Word document, because I know I’m going to keep all the dialogue.

So once I do that, I get a sense of just how much is already written for me, basically. And it’s usually maybe like ten thousand words. It’s not a ton in terms of the dialogue. That’s been pretty consistent over the four I’ve done.

Then when I do that, I start going through the script and I start adding. Depending on the script, sometimes there’s more description or less description. Halloween Kills had plenty of description of everything, so I was able to go ahead and work that in. I try to even use, if I can, some of the language of the scriptwriters, because I want their voices to come through in the book, too. The whole thing’s like a collaboration with people that you’ll never meet. So it’s not like I’m just writing this thing. It’s just a weird, long distance, no communication collaboration.

As I go along, I’ll just add in the scenes that I’ve kind of already blocked out in my mind. There’s a lot of research to do, too. I had to do a ton of research for the beginning, for the house fire. You know, it was pretty clear in the script. They lean a little bit in the movie at the end toward the “Is he or isn’t he supernatural?” The whole thing about Michael that’s really cool is that he exists in this kind of netherworld where we don’t really know if he’s just normal, or is he supernatural? And I don’t think we’ll ever know, really. That’s part of the fun. You know, the mystique of Michael.

So I was like, “Okay, if we’re gonna at least keep it up that he could be just a regular, real person, how the hell does he get out of a house fire?” So, you know, I find out how hot house fires burn, then I do research and I find out that any building or house built after 1960 … the materials release a toxic gas that will kill you within minutes. So Laurie’s house looked old enough that I thought, “Okay, I can get away with that.”

I made sure that the firefighters are thinking about that kind of stuff when they go in. You didn’t see it in the movie as much, but in the script it talks about how the firefighters are spraying water on top of the roof, and it’s breaking through the ceiling and falling into the house. So I use that to kind of show why the house itself was at least somewhat survivable as Michael got through, as he got water on him or whatever on the way out. But that took awhile. Also researching all the firefighters’ equipment. It would say what they were using in the script, and I had to go double check and make sure that’s what it was and figure out how it worked. So that sequence took a lot of research to do. Otherwise, I was able to write it pretty much from the script.

In the four that I’ve done, I’ve never gotten any material beyond the script. So I also hop onto the internet and try to find as many images as I can, or interviews where people like the director, the writers, or the actors might drop a few little tidbits and hints of things.

Plus, it was a sequel that goes right after the first movie, so everybody’s still kind of dressed the same. I could watch the movie to see what they look like, get a sense of their characters. I had already seen the movie a bunch of times. I own all the Halloween movies, I’ve seen them all. So I watched the first one again, and then I watched the 2018 one and just ignored the rest. Then I read John Passarella’s novelization too, because I wanted to make my book match his as best I could.

I also wanted to see how he wrote Michael too, so I could go ahead and just kind of stay in line with that for people who would read his book and then go to read my book. That it was to feel more like one person had written them.

BD: Is there anything that you can tease as far as any favorite moments that you created entirely on your own to expand upon the story that you got in the script? Or was there any specific character whose point of view you love diving into specifically?

TW: I love writing from Michael’s point of view, or as much as you can get into his point of view. It was a real challenge to get just a little on the surface of his point of view, because there’s not really anything in there as far as we know. According to Loomis in that first movie, there’s nothing in there. So I wrote him kind of like I would write a shark. It’s just stimulus and response. What stimulus attracts his attention, and what does he do about it? Sharks and animals like that, they just are what they do. So I kind of made it like that. But at the same time, there were things in the script that allowed me to push that just a bit, so I could kind of get into his point of view just a little bit more. You have a basic idea of how he’s reacting. Those are just little touches.

The biggest thing that I added was that there was someone in the script that doesn’t show up in the movie for a little bit. Then I added more about the other patient who escaped from the hospital. There are some scenes in the script, small things, where he’s there. He was also in the developed a little bit more in John Passarella’s novelization. The character [Tovoli] is one of the people that are standing outside with Michael in that very first scene in 2018 where the podcasters are approaching him.

But I got a chance to develop him a little more. I’ve got a backstory about how he ended up in the hospital. And … he was so terrified with all the people chasing them, I was able to write from his point of view for that. So that was a lot of fun.

I had two different editors on the project, and one of them was a big Halloween fan. So she and I together, we seeded little Easter eggs throughout the book, just for fun.

For example, there’s a pizza delivery. I can’t remember if it was in the script or I put it in there, but it wasn’t named. So we named it White Horse Pizza so we could reference the Rob Zombie movie, just to see if anybody notices or gets mad because we put some Rob Zombie’s Halloween in there. We have other little touches like that throughout that don’t do anything to disrupt the story, but they’re just there for fun. So all of that was good.

Getting to write Loomis was awesome, even if it was just for that one scene. I was really pumped when I read the script and saw that there was a flashback to the first movie, or at least the time of the first movie. So that was really cool. Just as a Halloween fan, there was just so much to enjoy about writing the book.

BD: Novelizations are sometimes based on early drafts which can change throughout the course of production, giving us books that can differ wildly from the final films. Was it similar in this case?

TW: Of the three previous ones I did, they did change a lot. I did one for Kingsman: The Golden Circle. I got one script and my editor got a different one, and nobody told us. So when I turned in the first draft, she was like, “What the hell is this?” I had to rewrite it. And then – this never ever happens, ever – but for whatever reason, the director decided I had to see the movie before I wrote the book, and I had to put everything that’s in the movie in there. So they flew me out to Hollywood to watch the movie. Then I had like three different versions of this story to work with. I just said “To hell with it” and made that book up out of the parts I liked the best, all three. And they were perfectly cool with that.

But when I watched [Halloween Kills] with my wife, I was stunned because there’s hardly any difference between the script and the movie. All the stuff that I thought they might take out in terms of little characterization bits and other stuff, every single thing’s there. There’s just a little tiny bit where it’s a little more streamlined or there’s just a little less dialogue, maybe in a scene. The ending is the same as in the movie, except in the script it goes on just a touch longer. It doesn’t change anything about the ending at all.

It just is a little different. It’s just like they ended thirty seconds early or something. Maybe that’ll show up on the special features of the DVD. But I was really surprised. It was kind of cool. It was weird because I’m used to seeing the movie and going, “Oh, that’s cool how they did that.” Or “Where the hell did that come from?” And it just didn’t happen with this one.

BD: The film was highly anticipated, but has been poorly received critically and has been divisive amongst fans. Does that concern you at all as a novelist who has penned a variation on this particular story, or are you even more excited to gauge readers’ reactions as a result?

TW: You know, I am active on Twitter. I’ve been following all those discussions that I see and reading whatever reviews I can find. I just think it’s really interesting. The strangest thing about it is that I’m watching people react to a story that they’ve just viewed, where I’ve known this story for a year and a half because the movie got bumped back by a year. So I have a really hard time critiquing it in any way, because in my mind it’s become concrete. You know, this is just Halloween Kills. This is just as how it’s made, this is what it’s all about. But it’s really interesting to me to see people that interpreted so differently.

It’s interesting to see people think that there’s some kind of political message about the insurrection in there because of the mob stuff, because I had the script in March 2020, so none of that stuff is intended. It hasn’t been changed from the script. It’s just circumstances.

In a lot of ways, I don’t know that … no matter how hard people try to make sequels to Halloween, the ’78 one, I don’t really know if you can recapture that in a lot of ways. So I think in some ways it’s good that people try to reinterpret Michael and do different things. I think it’s cool when people will do something different from the first movie, like in a trilogy. But especially for this one, people had a long time to anticipate what the story was going to be about, so it’s no doubt that people had the reaction to the reality of it. It just couldn’t match, you know, whatever it is that they imagined.

But yeah, it is kind of concerning. I saw the director talking about how he’s like, “Oh yeah, the ending isn’t there. We came up with a new one. It’s not even in the script. And I was like, “Well, damn it! My book’s not going to match.” Then when I saw the movie, I’m like, “It’s the same ending.” I don’t know what he’s talking about. There is absolutely nothing different than was in my script.

But yeah, I wonder if people will just not read the book because they think it’s a terrible movie. Or if they’re like, “Well, maybe it will be better in a book.” One of the things that I thought was interesting was people talking about how jam packed it is, and in a lot of ways that fits a novel a lot better than a movie because there’s just more room to breathe and for that stuff to spread out. You know, I get to develop that kind of thing more, I can add to it more, maybe even have characters comment on it in a way. Not like a meta-fictional way, but that they might be processing it the way the audience might be a little bit sometimes. So yeah, I’m really interested to see what people think about it.

I really hope they liked the scenes with Michael, because they were so much fun to write. I’m hoping that they feel like I captured him pretty well.

BD: I was a big fan of your Leisure novels back in the day, especially Like Death, Pandora Drive and Darkness Wakes, which were all very surreal. Were you able to inject any of that style into your adaptation of this somewhat more grounded tale at all, or did that even interest you?

TW: Maybe a little bit of both. I mean, a go-to trick that I’ll in use a novelization: sometimes if there’s a character that’s asleep, I can have them have a nightmare or a dream so I get to write a weird, surreal scene. I did that for Laurie when she’s on the operating table, when they’re working on her abdominal injury. I got to make that pretty surreal, which is a lot of fun. Hopefully people like that part.

The movie leans into at least the suggestion that Michael is supernatural, and I leaned into it a little bit more in a couple of places, and they had me tone that back. So I tried to do a little bit more, but that was all right. It worked out pretty good.

BD: You’ve tackled horror icons in the past – Freddy Krueger with A Nightmare on Elm Street: Protege and the Xenomorph for Alien: Prototype – and now you’ve written Michael Myers. Do you have any established monsters or horror villains that you’d like to tackle? Do you have a list that you want to check off?

TW: Well, when I was doing the Freddy Kruger tie-in for Black Flame, I was scheduled to do one for Final Destination, which was also going to be a zombie book because the editor was a big fan of European zombie films. But then they just stopped the line. I also wanted to pitch a Jason X book, where scientists in the future send Jason X back in time to kill previous versions of himself to try to wipe him from the timeline and save all these people … then just have him meet like every version of himself and fail, until he gets to the last version of himself. I was so excited to try to write that. I’d still love to write that idea.

The Universal Monsters I’d love to write, just because I grew up with them. When I was a kid, they were my favorites. I was jealous of Greg Keyes, who did the Godzilla novelizations, because I would love to write one of those. Especially Godzilla vs. Kong. My very first book I wrote when I was a kid, I took a stenographer’s pad and drew my own version of King Kong vs. Godzilla, because I hadn’t seen it yet. You could kind of flip through it like a book. It would have been so cool to actually get to write the real thing, but it just didn’t work out.

BD: Sorry, can we go back for two seconds to Final Destination with zombies, because that sounds incredible.

TW: Yeah. You know, I only wrote a chapter of it. The story was that there’s a trainwreck where there was this toxic chemical that killed a bunch of people. Of course, the characters were going to get into a wreck. They were gonna try to beat the train, they’re the ones that caused it, and then there’s a premonition and they don’t. So the Death Force later on causes this thing to derail, and everybody on the train becomes like a zombie from this chemical. The chemical, this gas cloud, is supposed to spread into the town and kill everybody, and it didn’t. So the zombies are gonna go in and do it.

One of the main characters was a serial killer who was trying to survive amidst all this other stuff with the people, and they had no idea who he was. I stole that idea and recycled it for book I wrote called The Way of All Flesh, another zombie book, where I had a serial killer in the zombie apocalypse. But that would have been a lot of fun to write, and it just didn’t work out.

When I did the Freddy Krueger novelization, I had a whole different story I was working on, and New Line hadn’t approved it yet. My editor was like, “Well, just start writing it. We’re getting close to the deadline, they’ll approve it.” And I wrote sixty pages of this thing. The story was going to be about Freddy chasing a girl in her dreams, and she has a Dreamcatcher over her bed. So she kind of dives through it from the other side, and he does, too. Except when he comes out, he’s human again. He’s excited at first to be human, but then something else takes over his position in the dream realm, and he wants to get back to it. He’s not powered up the way he was. He doesn’t have mastery the way he did over people, and he really wanted to get back to that.

And New Line said, “We can’t do that, because we don’t want anybody to remember that he was a child molester in the first movie.” I had a scene in there … I was going to have Freddy as a human hanging around the school yard, and all the kids by this point have been so educated in “Stranger Danger” that they won’t talk to him. So he can’t prey on them very easily. That was going to be the end of it, and I wasn’t going to address it at all anymore. But they nixed the idea, so I had to come up with another idea real quick, and that’s what finally became a novel

BD: It is curious that New Line almost wanted Freddy to be kind of cuddly and funny and amusing, and almost wanted audiences to root for him. They’ve tried to hide his origins as a child molester and child murderer and turn him into something more palatable for his adoring audience.

TW: You know, I have a theory that when something comes along, like a horror trope or a character of some kind … if it’s really, really scary and really disturbing, people will rush as fast as they can to make it safe. So they’ll turn it into a joke, or they’ll make it into a stuffed animal, like all these stuffed Cthulhu figures that you see, or they’ll turn them into [Funko] Pop figures. I remember when I showed my daughter Halloween, the ’78 version, for the first time … I showed it to her probably when she was like eleven, maybe.

She really wanted to see it. She was so wound up with suspense. At one point she stood off the couch and pointed at the screen and said, “Michael J. Myers, you stop that!” She gave him a middle initial, like moms do when they want to get after you. You know, she just couldn’t take it, so she was immediately trying to diminish Michael. And I think that we do that. I think that that’s probably what happened with Freddy Krueger.

Freddy is just a safe image at this point, pretty much. He’s like a stand-up comedian that’s just kind of getting after you in your dreams. And the kills are not even real. They’re just jokey kills.

BD: What do you have coming up aside from Halloween Kills that readers can keep an eye out for?

TW: Well, in February. I have an original adventure set in the world of the Zombicide Invader card game. It’s space zombies killing space Marines, basically. That was a lot of fun to write. My next novel for Flame Tree Press just went up for pre-orders, called We Will Rise. It’s about a ghost apocalypse. Ghosts rise all over the world and start killing people. That’s in July. Then sometime in 2022, the follow-up to my writing horror book Writing in the Dark. It’s a workbook called The Writing in the Dark Workbook. So those are all the things that I got coming out in 2022.

BD: Wrapping up, what final thoughts do you want to leave Bloody Disgusting readers with in advance of Halloween Kills’ release?

I mean, I think it’s really great that novelizations are still around and people are interested in them. Back in the day when I was a kid, novelizations were in a lot of ways the only way you could relive the movie. If the movie was ever shown on TV, it would be cut up, and there was no such thing as special features or deleted scenes. But you could get that kind of experience from a novelization.

Plus, I really loved the fact that you could get into people’s heads in a way that you can’t in a movie, because in a movie you’re a passive observer. But when you read, you get a chance to be immersed in these points of view of the characters.

For me, that’s the best part of a novelization, that I get to be in Laurie’s head or I get to be in Loomis’s head, or I get to be as much as you can be in Michael’s head. I think that’s the big appeal for novelizations, and I’m glad to see people still like reading them.

Very special thanks to Tim Waggoner for his time and insights.

The post ‘Halloween Kills’: The Novelization – Writer Tim Waggoner on How the Book Expands Upon and Differs from the Movie [Interview] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.