Scrapped Halloween Sequels That Should’ve Been Made

Published Oct 25, 2026, 10:15 AM EDT

George is a film critic and journalist with over nine years of experience in the entertainment industry. Beginning as the Co-Creator and Co-Editor of Star Wars Holocron, the most followed Star Wars fan account on Twitter/X, George went on to develop The HoloFiles, a movie and television-focused website with his brother and writing partner Josh.

A member of the Hollywood Creative Alliance, Chicago Indie Critics, Online Film and Television Association, and the Internet Film Critic Society, George has covered major industry events as credentialed media, including D23, CinemaCon, SXSW, Fantastic Fest, Star Wars Celebration, Tribeca Festival, and more. He also regularly writes reviews and contributes articles to ScreenAnarchy, BRWC, Film Obsessive, TV Obsessive, and Under the Radar. George's work has been featured in various esteemed publications, including the BBC, Associated Press, Forbes, and The New York Times.

The Halloween franchise has had a long and complicated trajectory since the release of John Carpenter’s iconic 1978 slasher. The immense financial and critical success of Halloween inevitably meant that sequels would follow, but few could have predicted just how tumultuous of a journey it was to get subsequent Michael Myers movies to the big screen.

The history of the Halloween franchise highlights the many missteps and handful of victories studios and filmmakers have had trying to continue the legacy of Michael Myers beyond Carpenter’s classic film. The likes of Halloween II and Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers largely succeeded, while Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers and Halloween: Resurrection represent relative low points in one of the most iconic horror movie franchises in history.

However, behind the sequels that made it to theaters, there are several fascinating alternate visions of Michael Myers that never came to fruition.

Dennis Etchison’s Halloween 4

John Carpenter reluctantly returned to the Halloween franchise in the mid 1980s due to a legal threat lodging that he would be sued if he prevented others from continuing the Michael Meyers franchise. Carpenter hired sci-fi and horror author Dennis Etchison to pen the screenplay for Halloween 4. In addition to previously writing the novelizations for Halloween II, Halloween III, and The Fog, Etchison was praised by Stephen King as “the most original living horror writer in America,” quite the testament from such a titan of horror.

Etchison’s Halloween 4 took place ten years after the original film in a Haddonfield that has since banned Halloween, much to the frustration of the younger generation.

The ban on Halloween extends to mere mentions of the fateful night Michael Myers plagued the town a decade prior, despite teenagers Tommy Doyle and Lindsey Wallace still struggling to come to terms with what happened. And, of course, Michael Myers does return for another killing spree.

Shem Bitterman’s Halloween 5: The Killer Inside Me

Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers concludes on such a fascinating ending (i.e., Jamie Lloyd attacking her foster mother, setting up her evolution into the new Michael Myers), but Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers bafflingly did not give this conclusion the follow-up it deserved. Screenwriter Shem Bitterman, however, crafted a much more appropriate sequel when he was hired to pen Halloween 5.

Halloween 5: The Killer Inside Me picks up immediately after the events of Halloween 4. Jamie Lloyd has just stabbed her foster mother, Ms. Carruthers, wearing the clown costume that young Michael Myers wore when he killed his sister Judith. The movie would have explored what came next for Jamie, which would have included police trying to arrest her, Michael Myers showing up and hunting her down, and another fateful final battle with Myers at the end. After his death, Myers would have been unmasked to reveal that he was actually a young boy.

Robert Zappia’s Halloween 7: Two Faces Of Evil

After the failure of Halloween 6: The Curse of Michael Myers, the creatives involved were desperate to return Myers to his former glory. In came aspiring screenwriter Robert Zappia, who did not shy away from taking on a Halloween sequel that was planned to be the first direct-to-video installment of the franchise.

Zappia’s Halloween 7: Two Faces of Evil begins on the night of October 28, 1998 with the murder of teenager Debra Wiley by an unseen killer. Detective Richard Kinkade and his partner Janet Blake are assigned to the case, with the former believing that Myers has returned to Haddonfield just in time for Halloween.

To investigate Myers’ potential culpability, Kinkade and Blake go to Middle Rock Penitentiary, where Myers has been incarcerated for the last three years. After, Myers dies, only to return to life and begin murdering various students at a local academy.

In this version of the story, the villain of the story would stand revealed as a criminal-turned-magician named Cain Gabriel. Gabriel was suspected early on, and the detectives' suspicion turn out to be well-founded, leading to a confrontation in the wood at the end of the film. Gabriel's final words are, “Impressed yet, Kinkade? I made Michael Myers disappear.” As Gabriel dies, the real Michael Myers fades into the darkness.

Dudi Appleton And Jim Keeble’s Halloween: Retribution

Halloween: Resurrection is widely regarded as one of the weakest installments of the Halloween franchise, but a follow-up devised by Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble appeared to have some potential.

Halloween: Retribution unfolds one year after the events of Halloween: Resurrection. Busta Rhymes’ Freddie Harris is promoting his book about how he killed Michael Myers when he encounters John Tate, the son of Laurie Strode played by Josh Hartnett in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later.

After the book signing, Myers appears and murders Freddie. John arrives too late to intervene, but commits to avenging his mother’s death and learning about his family’s troubled past by going to Haddonfield. Like Etchison’s Halloween 4, Haddonfield in Halloween: Retribution has banned Halloween. Interestingly and unlike any other installment of the franchise, Haddonfield is covered in snow on October 31 this year.

A group of teens, including shy senior Lea, aim to celebrate Halloween despite the ban, but the snow forces them to seek refuge in a nearby building, which just so happens to be the abandoned ruins of Smith’s Grove Sanitarium. Lea and her friends are unaware that Myers has been stalking them for quite some time and has also returned to Smith’s Grove.

Meanwhile, John comes to Haddonfield, who starts looking into his family’s history at a local library. There, he is met by Leigh Brackett, the town’s former sheriff, who informs John of a series of mysterious murders of Smith Grove’s ex-employees. Despite the police’s refusal to rescue the stranded teenagers due to the weather conditions, John travels to Smith’s Grove, in part to see if he can confront his uncle, and Brackett follows.

At Smith’s Grove. Myers picks off the teenagers one-by-one. His slaughter comes to a pause, however, when Lea impersonates his older sister Judith after she uncovers the slasher’s history in the old medical records vault. John and Brackett then arrive and instigate a battle that spills over into the snow storm outside. John and Myers battle on a frozen lake before John manages to bury an axe in Myers’ chest. Myers proceeds to collapse into the ice, bringing John with him. Lea and Brackett manage to pull John out as Myers sinks into the dark water. The film concludes as John, just dragged out of the freezing cold water, is seen staring intensely into the mask of Michael Myers in his hands.

Stef Hutchinson’s Halloween 3D

Rob Zombie’s Halloween II concluded on a note that seemingly did not warrant a follow-up, but the Weinsteins insisted on continuing the stories of Michael Myers and Laurie Strode, albeit without the involvement of Zombie. One of the writers tasked with creating a follow-up was Stef Hutchinson, the director of the documentary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, who was tasked with turning around a sequel to Zombie’s film that would be shot in 3D.

After a cold open depicting Michael Myers’ murder of a suburban couple named the Nichols, Halloween 3D cuts to Langdon, Illinois, a town quite a distance away from Haddonfield, in turn allowing Halloween 3D to be free of the grimy Haddonfield that Zombie created for his films.

The story would have followed a retired Lee Brackett, who is haunted by old case files related to Myers. When mysterious new killings begin, Brackett develops fears that Michael Myers is back. And that concern quickly becomes justified, as Myers does indeed return, tormenting kids at a high school.

Myers kills the entire cheerleading squad inside the girl’s locker room during a homecoming dance. Later on, Brackett realizes the extent of Myers’ twisted plan. Myers sought revenge against Brackett, but, rather than kill the tormented former sheriff, he set his sights on someone he loved - his niece Alice. Myers killed the Nichols family so he could gain access to their home, which conveniently is right across the street from the Brackett home, meaning Myers could spy on Alice.

The scrapped sequels of the Halloween franchise offer interesting insights into what the big-screen journey of Michael Myers could have looked like. As creatives are seemingly hard at work devising how to follow-up Halloween Ends, maybe some of these scrapped stories could serve as a solid jumping off point for the Shape's next adventure.

Halloween

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  Donald Pleasence

  Loomis

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  Laurie

Halloween is a 1978 slasher film centered on Laurie Strode, a teenage babysitter stalked through Haddonfield, Illinois, by escaped killer Michael Myers on Halloween night. As Myers targets Laurie and her friends, his psychiatrist Dr. Samuel Loomis races to find him before the killing continues. This film marked the beginning of the long-running Halloween horror franchise.