Moustapha Akkad

Shooting connective footage of Michael as the paramedic the day after, uh, H2O f- uh, wrapped filming, producers were sure to give themselves an out.

Moustapha Akkad refused to green light, uh, H2O without that.

But, uh, what the next movie would end up being after that was pretty much up for grabs.

Well, and even like, you know, like, yes, they film this after principle of photography.

... and if you go back and listen to that episode, we went over all of this and how upset she was about, "I agreed to come back because I thought we were ending this."

Yeah.

And then Moustapha Akkad said, like, "It's in the contract.

You cannot kill Michael Myers." And so this wa- that was the agreement.

There are people that think that Halloween III is amazing, which I, you know, it's grown in its cult status, but that was the film that nearly killed the franchise, uh, when it came out because, of course, Michael Myers is not in that one, but it was titled Halloween.

And then Moustapha Akkad revives it in Halloween 4, so people are very passionate about that one and, and that's a great film.

And then the later films where you have the H2Os that you spoke about earlier, where you have s- you know, basically star-making roles for Michelle Williams.

You've got Josh Hartnett.

Spoilers.

It was fucking Mustafa Akkad, who was at this point basically the owner of the franchise and had all the rights and everything, calling the shots, and he was just running through writers and and directors and stuff like burning through him like oh you have an idea well i don't like that idea because it doesn't do what the previous movie did with this shit you know like he was very it was weird because it seems like he was like on board for like taking massive swings and and things but at the same time he's also very conservative about what he would allow to be done in a sequel.

He always seems to fall back on not only repeated beats, but repeatedly stupid beats that... shouldn't have been in this series, but yeah.

And he's okay with writing himself into a corner and being like, they'll figure it out the next movie.

We don't like girl killers.

We gotta have Michael back.

I can't foresee them getting the rights to do it because, I mean, Mustafa Akkad, of course, he died in a...

Terrorism.

Development on the fifth Halloween was fast-tracked to meet a preset release deadline of October 1989.

Moustapha Akkad turned to Halloween 4 writer and director, uh, writers and director Alan B. McElroy and Dwight H.

Little, but they said nah.

They both declined.

The bitter divorce happened.

Mustafa Akkad took over rights to the franchise.

And from Halloween 4 on, it's his franchise with limited involvement from the founding fathers and mothers, so to speak.

Yeah, again, John Carpenter is infamously quite grumpy anyway.