Zombie to resurrect Halloween

Rob Zombie

Zombie will write and direct a new Halloween movie, serving up what is being called as a brand-new vision for the long-running horror series. He will also serve as a producer and a music supervisor on the film.

An October 2007 release is being planned. Disney's Miramax Films will co-finance the development with former Miramax chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Dimension Films.

The movie will not be a sequel or a straight-ahead remake of the 1978 original -- which helped director John Carpenter cement his name in the horror business -- but a re-imagining that will infuse new blood into the Myers story.

"The look and the feel is going to be completely different," Zombie said in an interview. "Halloween started off as a very terrifying concept, a terrifying movie. But over the years, Michael Myers has become a friendly Halloween mask. When it came to the point where you could buy a Michael Myers doll that was cute-looking and press its stomach and play the Halloween theme, you knew the scare factor was gone.

"But I think the story and the situation is scary. All it needed was someone to come in and to take a totally different approach to make it scary again. To me, that's the challenge and that's the fun."

Needless to say, the movie will not pay heed to the numerous sequels. The last Halloween film, Halloween: H20, came out in 1998.

"Everything that has come before does not figure into this one," Zombie said. "That series is done."

And while Zombie aims to keep the scares and the character more real, the mask will remain.

"That's an iconic image that can't go away," he said.

Zombie wrote and directed House of 1000 Corpses and last year's The Devil's Rejects, which proved to be extremely profitable theatrically and on DVD. A lot of horror movies have been thrown his way, but he wanted to be choosy when it came to his third film.