Halloween

Facts from the original

• Halloween is a 2007 American slasher film produced, written, and directed by Rob Zombie.
• It is a remake of John Carpenter's 1978 film and the ninth installment in the Halloween franchise.
• The film was released theatrically in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on August 31, 2007, with The Weinstein Company distributing elsewhere.
• It was made on a $15 million budget and grossed $80 million worldwide.
• A sequel, Halloween II, was released in 2009.
• Working from Carpenter's advice to 'make it his own', Zombie developed the film as both an origin story and a remake to allow for more original content.
• Production officially began on January 29, 2007.
• Filming took place in the same neighborhood Carpenter used for the original Halloween.
• Dimension Films announced on June 4, 2006, that Rob Zombie would create the next installment as a remake of the original.
• Zombie gave Michael's mask its own backstory and made Michael unable to drive, unlike the 1978 version who stole Loomis' car.
• Zombie kept Michael's trademark mask and Carpenter's theme intact, though he added more backstory to the character.
• Michael's childhood nickname for Laurie is 'Boo'.
• Zombie's original ending had Loomis convince Michael to let go of Laurie before Michael was killed in a hail of gunfire.
• The film received generally negative reviews from critics despite its box office success.
• On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 28% approval rating from 122 reviews, with an average rating of 4.40/10.
• On Metacritic it scored 47 out of 100 from 18 reviews, indicating 'mixed or average' reviews.
• CinemaScore reported the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was 'B−'; 62% of the audience was male and 57% was 25 or older.
• The film grossed $10,896,610 on its opening day.
• Its 3-day opening weekend total was $26,362,367.
• Its 4-day Labor Day weekend gross of $30,591,759 was the highest ever for that holiday, beating Transporter 2's $20.1 million from 2005, and remained the record until Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings in 2021.
• It opened in 3,472 North American theaters, the widest release of any previous Halloween film.
• It earned about $21,981,879 overseas and a worldwide total of $80,253,908.
• It won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Film of 2007 with 550 votes, the most in the award's history.
• It won the 'Best Remake Award' at the 2008 Spike TV Scream Awards.
• It was nominated for 'Best Film' at the Sitges Film Festival.
• Sheri Moon Zombie was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Fright Meter Awards.
• PETA vice president Dan Mathews sent Rob Zombie a thank-you letter for depicting young Michael Myers torturing animals, seeing it as a message linking animal cruelty to human violence.
• John Carpenter was ambivalent about the film, saying that giving Myers a backstory took away from his mystique.
• Quentin Tarantino initially disliked the film but grew to appreciate the performances of Harris and Faerch and Zombie's 'Sam Peckinpah aesthetic'.
• Before Zombie's remake, various unmade pitches existed, including a Hellraiser crossover with Pinhead and the Cenobites, Halloween: Bad Blood, Halloween: Retribution, Halloween: Asylum, and Halloween: The Missing Years.
• Development of a direct sequel stopped when producer Moustapha Akkad was killed in the 2005 Amman hotel bombings, after which his son Malek took the series in a different direction.
• About four days before the theatrical release, a workprint version of the film leaked online and circulated on BitTorrent sites.
• In foreign markets it opened alongside Michael Clayton and Mr. Woodcock on the weekend of September 29, 2007, leading the trio with $1.3 million from 372 theaters.
• The soundtrack was released on August 21, 2007, with 24 tracks consisting of 12 dialogue tracks and 12 instrumentals.
• The film was released on DVD in the United States on December 18, 2007, with both the 110-minute theatrical version and a 121-minute unrated director's cut as two-disc special editions.
• A three-disc Collector's Edition was released on October 7, 2008, including Zombie's four-and-a-half-hour making-of documentary.
• The UK DVD, known as the 'Uncut' edition, was released on April 28, 2008.