Exclusive: Halloween Series In Development For Peacock
Our sources are telling us a Halloween series is being prepared for streaming on Peacock, but what kind of series will it be?
Well, Halloween didn’t quite “end” so much after all, did it? Our trusted and proven sources are telling us that a Halloween series is in development at Peacock. It’s still far too early, however, to tell exactly when fans will get to see it.
Considering the performance of the most recent (and supposedly final) Halloween film entry, the series development news shouldn’t be too surprising. While on its opening weekend Halloween Ends underperformed at the box office, it also became the most watched screen project–including films and series–to be streamed on Peacock in a two day period. Those kinds of numbers presumably showed NBCUniversal where they could best capitalize on the franchise.
Details are still incredibly scarce about the show, but doubtless anyone who’s seen this year’s divisive Halloween Ends might be understandably confused about the notion of a series follow-up on Peacock or anywhere else. SPOILER WARNING: The film ends with Michael Myers’ (James Jude Courtney/Nick Castle) supposed final defeat at the hands of his old target Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her granddaughter Allyson (Andi Matichak). His body is disposed of in arguably the most final way imaginable–lowered into an industrial shredder.
Horror icons have come back from much more irreversible endings, but there are directions in which a Halloween series could go on Peacock without undoing the recent film’s ending. For one, there’s always the possibility of a prequel. We could be shown exactly how Michael Myers becomes an unstoppable mass murderer.
Yes, Rob Zombie‘s Halloween remake films already did that and even went so far as to make Myers and Laurie Strode (played by Scout Taylor-Compton in Zombie’s version) brother and sister. But David Gordon Green’s trilogy ignored those films completely., opening the possibility that a Halloween prequel series on Peacock could write a new origin. Not to mention we could always get a prequel that isn’t set at the beginning or end of Michael’s journey, but somewhere in the middle.
Another possibility is one that John Carpenter made a stab at years ago. The Halloween series being developed at Peacock could have little or nothing to do with Michael Myers, and could instead be an anthology like The Twilight Zone or Black Mirror. As SyFy recalled earlier this year, Carpenter had hopes of steering the franchise away from Myers and tried to do that with 1982’s Halloween III: Season of the Witch, but when it flopped at the box office the return of The Shape was inevitable.
If an anthology show is the direction the Halloween series on Peacock is headed, it would do well to learn from its predecessors from other franchises. It would not be the first major horror franchise known for a single iconic villain to develop a series that had little or nothing to do with the bad guy. Freddy’s Nightmares enjoyed two seasons with Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger introducing each episode and occasionally showing up in the story.
Friday the 13th mades its own stab with Friday the 13th: The Series, with a story about heroes working at an antique shop and trying to recover dangerous relics. The series had no connection at all to Jason Vorhees and was abruptly canceled in its third season.
