David Gordon Green’s reinvigorated Halloween trilogy may only be one movie old until the sequel finally arrives a year behind schedule in October, but it already looks to have set a new template for how major horror properties will be rebooted in the future.
It isn’t quite a clean slate for the long-running series, but it picks up from where John Carpenter’s classic 1978 original left off, ignoring everything else that came in between, even though several of those sequels starred Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode. Such an approach allows the new set of films to tip their hat towards the mythology without getting bogged down in nostalgia, and it almost resulted in Paul Rudd making a surprising return to the fold as Tommy Doyle.
Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers was just Rudd’s second-ever big screen role after Clueless, and he played a grown up version of the kid Laurie babysat in the opening chapter. Several familiar actors or characters have been integrated into Green’s Halloween so far, but Halloween Kills will see Anthony Michael Hall step in as Tommy.
To give you an idea of how immortal Paul Rudd really is, he’s less than a year younger than Hall, even though the latter was a 1980s teen idol thanks to his roles in National Lampoon’s Vacation, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club and Weird Science, so it’s not as strange a substitution as you might think.
Rudd was actually approached about making a comeback in Halloween Kills, but he had to politely decline due to his commitments to Ghostbusters: Afterlife. As great as it would have been to see the Ant-Man star running away from Michael Myers in 2021, we’re sure Hall will do a solid job as his replacement.
