In October of 1978, we saw Michael Myers come home. It was the first time he'd stepped on his town's soil in 15 years, but it certainly wouldn't be the last. Over the decades, we've seen the serial killing prodigal son of Haddonfield cross back into small town limits to create carnage with everything from a butcher knife to a pitchfork, though we haven't seen his silent rage at work on the big screen since Rob Zombie's H2 in 2009.

But we're now one big step closer to seeing Michael come home again, as the folks at Dimension Films have hired a pair of writers to pen the long-gestating next entry in the Halloween franchise, and many horror hounds are very familiar with the duo tasked with bringing back The Shape.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan have been hired to write the new Halloween movie that's being described as "not a remake, not a reboot, and not a reimagining", but more of a "recalibration." Malek Akkad, son of prolific Halloween franchise producer Moustapha Akkad, is producing the project along with Matt Stein. The director, release date, and plot details for the new Halloween film are not yet known.

If you enjoyed the respective Feast and The Collector franchises, the final four Saw movies, and Piranha 3DD, then you don't need plot details to know what type of style the new Halloween film could have. Melton and Dunstan collaborated on the scripts for the aforementioned films, with Dunstan also directing The Collector and The Collection. These two scribes have been known to craft stories with gore galore and eclectic characters aplenty, so we can expect to see some of the same in the next Michael Myers story.

Development on a new Halloween film has been underway for as long as a stint in Smith's Grove Sanitarium, as horror hounds with an ear for Haddonfield news will remember that Patrick Lussier (Terminator Genisys, My Bloody Valentine) and Todd Farmer (Jason X, 2009's My Bloody Valentine) were at one time scribing the next Halloween sequel, titled Halloween 3D. Tough as it was for many fans to see that project come to a halt, there is at least some solid headway now being made on the next entry in the franchise that has instilled fear in the autumnal holiday for generations. Stay tuned to Daily Dead for more updates.

It's worth noting that Melton and Dunstan have also penned big screen adaptations of Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell's seminal Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books and Leslie Stevens' beloved 1960s TV series, The Outer Limits. Both projects are still in development.

Source: THR
  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.