Curse of Michael Myers re-issued?

Possible DVD release for the ‘Producer’s Cut’

Good news for Paul Rudd….

There’s apparently a ‘producer’s cut’ of one of his early acting efforts in the works.

“Halloween : The Curse of Michael Myers” could be hitting DVD in its original unedited form – even though many have already seen it via grainy, timecoded video cassette.

Daniel Farrands wrote the screenplay for the film and tells Fangoria he’s about to have a discussion with Miramax about releasing a 2-disc special edition of the film… with what he calls the definitieve cut of Myer’s fifth adventure.

“It’s going to be the subject of a conference call that I’m having with Miramax,” the writer tells the site. “I’ve finally gotten somebody’s attention over there. I have been in touch with them over the years, and during the past month I’ve had e-mail exchanges with everyone from their home video marketing people to their legal affairs department. The long but sad answer is that first, no one could figure out who had the rights. The movies Dimension made at the time when they were funded by Disney have reverted back to Disney, so they own the sixth, seventh and eighth HALLOWEENs, and the Weinsteins no longer have the rights. But not only did Disney not know they had them, they did a cost analysis [once they were informed], looked at it and said, ‘We don’t think it will make any money.’

“I told them everyone who had bought a bootleg would go back out and buy [an official release],” Farrands continues. “We could do a two-disc version with the producer’s cut and the theatrical version, commentaries, behind-the-scenes and everything. They said no, and I said, ‘Well, could you license it to a company such as Anchor Bay? They have done a wonderful job with the series.’ But they said no again, and that was because they didn’t want it competing with the bare-bones version they had in the marketplace.

“However, that DVD is now out of print. So I sent them dozens and dozens of websites and eBay pages, and I finally got their attention. So we are now going to have a discussion about it, and I hope I can convince them do something.”

I don’t actually know why the sixth “Halloween” movie was so heavily edited and tweaked for its release – it could’ve had something to do with Donald Pleasence’s death (assume that would’ve had to have caused some problems) or the rumoured clash between director Joe Chappelle and the producer.

There’s a great write-up on the ‘Producers Cut’ at this site