Though she won her Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, the Jamie Lee Curtis renaissance undoubtedly started with 2018's excellent Halloween legacy sequel, directed by David Gordon Green. That project eventually turned into a trilogy, but Curtis has revealed that had she known the full scope of Green's plans, she wouldn't have said yes in the first place.
Speaking on a SXSW panel (h/t Variety), Curtis didn't mince her words when discussing the reason why a trilogy of Halloween films for Blumhouse didn't appeal at the time. "If they had come to me and said it's going to be a trilogy, I don't think I would have said yes," Curtis revealed. "Jason Blum is notoriously cheap. How do you make low-budget movies? You don't pay people. That's the model."
Despite labelling him "notoriously cheap" in front of an audience of his peers (Blum might prefer "economical"), Curtis noted that "the only reason I am sitting in this chair today is because of Jason [Blum]," with the Halloween movies opening the door for her production company, Comet Pictures, to get their own movies made.
"While we were editing and doing the mix, David [Gordon Green] said, 'You know it's a trilogy.' I was like, 'Uh, no.' I went to Jason Blum and said... 'How about a little development deal?' And I owed him two Halloween movies, so what was he gonna say?"
Curtis, of course, went on to star in the less-well-received sequels, Halloween Kills (2021) and Halloween Ends (2022), though – spoiler alert! – Laurie Strode survives her final battle with Michael Myers, meaning Strode could one day return (though that sounds extremely unlikely). Curtis is at SXSW with Russell Goldman's directorial debut, Sender, about a woman whose paranoia spirals out of control when she receives a series of mysterious packages from an unknown sender. Severance's Britt Lower, Pluribus' Rhea Seehorn, and One Piece season 2's David Dastmalchian also star.
Halloween is currently out of season, so to speak, at least on the big screen. In 2023, Miramax announced it had acquired the rights to develop a Halloween TV show and planned to build out a 'cinematic universe' as well. Though news on that incarnation of the venerable franchise has vaporized like the Shape.
After a rough 2025 that saw M3GAN 2.0 flop and spin-off, SOULM8TE, wiped from the release schedule, Blumhouse has a strong lineup for 2026, including Lee Cronin's The Mummy, Obsession, Insidious 6, and Other Mommy. Mike Flanagan's Exorcist reboot also recently started filming for Blumhouse after adding a collection of Flana-verse regulars, and is set to release in 2027.
For more, check out the best horror movies you should be watching right now.
