Earlier this year, John Carpenter announced he had partnered with SYFY to executive producer a series of programs for the network, starting with an adaptation of his graphic novel series Tales For A Halloween Night, followed by an adaptation of the book series Nightside. David Hayter, writer of X-Men and X2, recently revealed during a panel at the Manchester MCM Comic Con that he was writing a project with Carpenter slated to direct the pilot.
“I’m doing a TV show, I’m writing and producing a TV show, that John Carpenter is directing the pilot for,” Hayter pointed out. “So I’m working with John Carpenter now.”
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He added, “We are taking it out to networks. So hopefully it’ll be announced very soon.”
Considering Carpenter already has a deal in place with SYFY, this project most likely isn’t one of the series for that network, but it’s also possible Hayter may have misspoke and the project will eventually be developed for SYFY.
Whatever the project is, this is huge news for John Carpenter fans, as it marks his first directing project since 2010’s The Ward, with the project before that being 2001’s Ghosts of Mars. For the better part of a decade, the filmmaker has focused more of his efforts on producing and creating music, but considering he has given us films like Halloween, The Thing, The Fog, and They Live, knowing that he will be directing any type of project is exciting.
“John Carpenter is an incredible creator whose dark imagination has left an indelible mark in film and in our dreams,” said David Olmstead, EVP Development at Universal Cable Productions, of the partnership between Carpenter and SYFY. “We are thrilled to have a master of the horror genre join UCP.”
Carpenter himself revealed, “I’m excited to partner with Universal Cable Productions on this venture into television. On one hand it’s a return home to Universal where I have fond memories, and on the other it’s a step into the future with great new creative partners in programming.”
Tales For A Halloween Night is based on the graphic novel anthology that was masterminded by Carpenter, which brought together storytellers from the worlds of movies, novels, and comics for a collection of tales featuring graveyards, sunken ships, creepy crawlers and ghosts to haunt your dreams at night. The award-winning anthology was so successful, it spawned multiple volumes.
