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Jamie Lee Curtis returned because she wasn't satisfied with Laurie's old ending in 'Halloween' franchise
Jamie Lee Curtis came back for the new Halloween trilogy because she knew Laurie needed a better ending.
By Tyler McCarthy
Jamie Lee Curtis was on hand at New York Comic Con 2022 where she let some details fly about why she was willing to come back to the Halloween franchise despite previously bidding farewell to Laurie Strode during another appearance in a prior sequel.
While the upcoming film Halloween Ends completes the trilogy that kicked off with Halloween (2018) and ignores all the previous films but the original, it’s far from the first time that Curtis reprised her iconic role as Laurie Strode (or bid farewell to it).
In 1998, to mark the 20-year anniversary of the original film, Curtis returned for Halloween: H20. The film saw her character running from the town of Haddonfield and going into hiding with her son at a boarding school in California. Curtis said she is proud of the movie, which dealt with the perils of letting fear kill you before you’re dead. However, she said she only agreed to do it if it put a definitive end to Michael as well.
Curtis revealed that wasn’t so easy. At the time, there was some kind of stipulation from on high that the movie couldn’t end with Michael Meyers’ death. A stipulation that she took issue with: “Now, this is a train that’s going, I mean we‘re ready to go,” she said. “I said, ‘I’m not going to do it, I’m not going to tease the audience again. I came up with an idea to end it. I said I won’t do it."
As horror fans know, writer Kevin Williamson came up with the idea to reveal in the 2002 movie Halloween Resurrection that Meyers switched clothes with a paramedic, meaning the person Strode decapitated at the end of H20 was an innocent man. Curtis said she was fine with the twist but was done with the series.
“I said, ‘OK if you’re going to do that and it looks like Laurie has ended it and my audience feels like it’s ended, OK I’ll do it. But, you have to pay me a lot of money in the next movie and you have to kill me in the first ten minutes of the movie because I’ve now killed an innocent man and I can’t live with that.”
That’s exactly what happened at the beginning of Resurrection, when Curtis thought she’d bid her final farewell to Strode, clearly in a way that she wasn’t very on board with. Just give it a few years, though. Cut to 2017 when she got a call from director David Gordon Green, who had a great idea for a movie that included a much more satisfying depiction of Strode.
Curtis said she always envisioned that Laurie Strode went through hell on Halloween in 1978 but went to school the following Monday and lived as the victim for her whole life. Green had another idea.
“He sent me a script and said she spent 40 years hiding behind barbed wire, emotionally and physically,” Curtis explained. “At the expense of her daughter and granddaughter, she knows Michael Meyers is coming back. It was this incredible film about Laurie and her trauma.”
She added: “It was this beautiful movie about a woman taking control of her life and it coincided with the women around the world standing up and taking control of their lives and saying ‘Me Too, Me Too, Time Is Up and Me Too.'’’
Now, Curtis said she’s excited to show the relationship between her character and Michael one final time when “Halloween Ends” releases in theaters and on Peacock on October 14.
