"My Bloody Valentine 3D" director Patrick Lussier was all set to take the reins of the first ever 3-D "Halloween" franchise flick — titled, appropriately enough, "Halloween 3D" — last fall, until the Weinstein Company hit the brakes on the production.
There are nearly as many rumors about what happened as there are films in the decades-long run of Michael Myers-focused horror movies: Some said Weinstein was experiencing financial troubles; Bob Weinstein himself felt preproduction was too rushed, and Lussier had to begin shooting "Drive Angry" in early 2010; Rob Zombie's "Halloween II" opened to a middling $16 million weekend, and so on.
All that's in the past. The question for horror fans now is: What's going to happen to "Halloween 3D"? MTV News spoke with Lussier late last week, and he seemed both hesitant to speculate about the fate of "Halloween" and resigned that, if and when the movie ramps up again, he might not be sitting in the director's chair.
"We were ready to go with that last year, and then their situation changed, and then we weren't," he said.
Instead, Lussier shifted his focus to "Drive Angry," the Nicolas Cage-starring, 3-D action film that recently began filming in Shreveport, Louisiana. Back in the fall, Weinstein-owned Dimension Films' plan seemed to be to shoot "Halloween" after "Drive Angry" wrapped. Is that still the case?
"That'll all depend on Dimension Films and timing," Lussier said.
Lussier and screenwriter Todd Farmer's intended "Halloween 3D" to be a natural extension of Zombie's "Halloween II," while at the same time returning the franchise to its origins.
"The film that we wrote took place, like, the next frame after Rob's 'Halloween II' ended and immediately went into stripping Michael Myers back to his John Carpenter roots," Lussier said, referring to the creator of the "Halloween" franchise. "That's what we did very quickly. And then you pick up the story a year later as Halloween rolls around again. Everybody's back in the fray. That was our goal."
Is there any chance Lussier could still bring that script to three-dimensional life?
"If things were to work out," he said, trailing off. "Right now, my focus is on 'Drive Angry.' "
Check out everything we've got on "Drive Angry."
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