After the success of Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, there has been a lot of chatter about the future of director Quentin Tarantino. However, with so much focus on what he's going to do next, fans might forget how his plans to take on a sixth Halloween movie fell apart.
Tarantino, who's a fan of the Halloween franchise, spoke with Consequence of Sound and explained how the chance to direct the sixth installment escaped his grasp."Yeah, yeah, well, way before I’d ever done anything … it would have been if I had done it — I never got hired — but it would have been my job to figure out who the guy in the boots is," he said.
The "guy in the boots" is a reference to the Man in Black, who first appeared in Halloween 5 and was the character responsible for breaking Michael Myers out of prison. However, even though Tarantino didn't get the gig, he still has some thoughts. "Yeah, I was like, 'Leave that scene where [the Man in Black] shows up, alright, and freeze Michael Myers,'" he continued. "And so the only thing that I had in my mind — I still hadn’t figured out who that dude was — was like the first 20 minutes would have been the Lee Van Cleef dude and Michael Myers on the highway, on the road, and they stop at coffee shops and shit and wherever Michael Myers stops, he kills everybody. So, they’re like leaving a trail of bodies on Route 66."
Although he didn't get to direct any of the Halloween movies, he still has high praise for the Rob Zombie era of the franchise. While he admits he didn't like it at first, he eventually came around. "Eight months later, I watched it on video … and I really liked them once I got all the preconceptions out of my head," he said. "That kid [Daeg Faerch] is really good. I mean, what did I think Rob Zombie was going to do with it? Do I want him to do something else? I like his Sam Peckinpah aesthetic. So, now that I didn’t have a bug up my ass about it, I was actually able to appreciate it."
Of course, the Halloween franchise was given new life in 2018. Directed by David Gordon Green and written by Green, Danny McBride, Paul Brad Logan and Chris Bernier, the next installment, Halloween Kills, stars Jamie Lee Curtis, Andi Matichak and Judy Greer. The film is set to hit theaters on Oct. 16, 2020.