Halloween Filmmaker John Carpenter To Return To Horror With New TV Series

John Carpenter is returning to the horror genre. The filmmaker is perhaps best known for directing, co-writing, and composing the iconic score for 1978’s Halloweenalthough other legendary John Carpenter movies include The Thing, Escape from New York, They Live, Big Trouble in Little Chinaand Christina.

Elevation Pictures has just announced that they have inked a deal with John Carpenter. The filmmaker will be executive producing a new horror anthology series titled John Carpenter Presentswhich is being created and showrun by fellow executive producers Michael Amo (mashed, The Listener) and Will Pascoe (Orphan Black, Da Vinci’s Demons).

Sandy King Carpenter will also executive produce alongside John Carpenter via Storm King Productions. The official synopsis reveals that season 1 of the series, which is based on a story by Amo and Pascoe is “set in the remote wilderness of Alaska, where a diverse group of characters face a chilling mix of supernatural and existential terror.”

Elevation Pictures’ Christina Piovesan says that “we can’t be more excited for this creative team to bring the series to audiences.“

Although John Carpenter’s final directorial feature was 2010’s The Ward, he has continued to create within the horror genre since thenin various capacities. This includes co-composing the scores for Blumhouse’s trilogy of Halloween movies (which ran from 2018 through 2022) and directing the final episode of the 2023 Peacock series John Carpenter’s Suburban Screamswhich he also executive produced.

It remains to be seen if John Carpenter Presents has more longevity than Suburban Screamswhich only ran for six episodes, all of which premiered on the same day, on October 13, 2023.

However, the filmmaker’s new project may ultimately be able to thrive because of one major difference between the two anthology series. While Suburban Screams told a different story during each of its six episodes, it seems likely that John Carpenter Presents will tell one story per season.

This will put it in a similar position to FX’s hit horror anthology series American Horror Storywhich was created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk and debuted in 2011. While the show was able to attract viewers’ attention by telling longer, serialized stories, it was still able to inject fresh material into the mix with each new season.

In fact, the new John Carpenter series could be coming at the perfect time, because American Horror Story seasons have had unusually long hiatuses between them in recent years, and the show has in fact not been on the air since April 2024. This leaves a void that John Carpenter Presents could fill, especially if it is picked up by a notable network.