Tonight: John Carpenter’s ‘Halloween’ Returns to Nearly 300 Theaters Nationwide
John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween (1978), the film that invented the modern slasher, returns to the big screen tonight at 294 theaters nationwide, […]
John Carpenter’s iconic Halloween (1978), the film that invented the modern slasher, returns to the big screen tonight at 294 theaters nationwide, spanning 39 states and 91 markets.
The special screening event arrives just four days ahead of the September 8 release of Halloween: The Game (read our review), the new asymmetrical horror title from developer IllFonic in conjunction with the original film’s rights holder, Compass International Pictures, Inc. and Producers, Further Front.
“There is nothing like watching Halloween the way it was meant to be seen, in a theatre, in the dark, on the big screen,” said Malek Akkad, CEO of Trancas International Films. “Nearly fifty years later, Michael Myers still brings audiences back to Haddonfield. Pairing this screening event with the launch of Halloween: The Game gives fans a whole weekend to celebrate the original film that started it all.”
“Halloween is the reason we do horror,” saidCharles Brugardt, CEO at IllFonic. “Bringing the original 1978 film back to nearly 300 theaters the same week players can finally step into Michael Myers’ mask themselves felt like the perfect way to celebrate everything this franchise means to fans.”
Halloween is widely regarded as one of the most influential horror films ever made and is credited with establishing many of the tropes that define the slasher genre. The film opens on Halloween night in 1963, when six-year-old Michael Myers brutally murders his seventeen-year-old sister, Judith. Sentenced and locked away for fifteen years, Michael escapes Smith’s Grove Sanitarium on October 30, 1978, at age twenty-one, and returns to his quiet hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, in search of his next victims.
Halloween was written by John Carpenter and Debra Hill and directed by Carpenter. It starred Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut, alongside Donald Pleasence, P.J. Soles and Nancy Loomis.
The theatrical release is timed to the September 8 launch of , an asymmetrical horror sandbox in which players can choose to take The Shape of Evil as Michael Myers or band together as Heroes of Haddonfield to survive his rampage. On Halloween night, 1978, no one is safe from Michael Myers, becoming the Boogeyman or fighting back against the face of evil itself is now in players’ hands. is developed by IllFonic and published by Gun,and will be available for early access on September 4 and launches wide on September 8 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Store.