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Meet the Man who Saved Michael Myers, Moustapha Akkad

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Today we would be celebrating producer Moustapha Akkad’s 87th birthday if his life wasn’t tragically taken at a bombing in a hotel lobby in Amman, Jordan.  Being born in Syria, Akkad came to the United States in 1950 at 20 years old to study film making at the University of California, and then furthered his education at the University of Southern California.

As a horror fan you may not know who he is, but he was a producer on the first eight Halloween films, and perhaps the saga’s biggest cheerleader.  He helped produced the first movie, and then executive produced the following seven.  In fact, he was the only person to be involved in all of the first eight films.

His most notable contribution to the horror series, despite funding the original, was keeping it alive.  Not just financially afloat, but by understanding what made the first two movies so special and successful.  When Halloween 3: Season of the Witch was released it received a major backlash from the audience for not having the masked villain, Michael Myers.  Akkad told Fangoria magazine everyone came out of Halloween 3 asking “Where’s Michael?”  That is when Akkad made the decision to bring the future films back to what made the first two successful, a real flesh and blood killer.

Unfortunately this is where John Carpenter and co-writer Debra Hill parted ways with Akkad.  He had rejected their script for the fourth installment, calling it “too cerebral.”  He wanted to bring the movie back to its roots.  That is when Carpenter and Hill signed the rights over to Akkad and he continued the series as an executive producer, always with the image of what he wanted at the forefront of each movie.

After his passing, Akkad’s son Malek continued his legacy by working on the Halloween series.  He began with Halloween: H20 and continued with Halloween: Resurrection, Rob Zombie’s Halloween 1 and 2, as well as a rumor of him joining the crew for 2018’s Halloween.  Through his son the Akkad name will hopefully always be associated with the saga that he invested so much of his life in.

Watch the video bellow to see Akkad talking about the original Halloween and why he chose to finance it.

Random Fact:  Two years after his untimely death Rob Zombie’s Halloween was released, in which Zombie tastefully dedicated to Moustapha Akkad.

 

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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