Yahoo News Miramax Lands ‘Halloween’ TV Rights In Broad Agreement With Trancas, Plots Cinematic Universe
EXCLUSIVE: After a heated bidding war, Miramax has scored the television rights to the hugely popular Halloween franchise, which are controlled by Trancas International Films, run by Malek Akkad.
Miramax Television has signed a wide-ranging deal with Trancas to develop and co-produce a Halloween TV series, which also includes a first-look agreement on other television projects for the international marketplace.
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The new Halloween series is envisioned to potentially launch a cinematic universe spanning film and television. Miramax’s Head of Global TV Marc Helwig will be overseeing the franchise creatively in close collaboration with Akkad.
The pact marks a new chapter in Miramax and Trancas’ partnership on the Halloween franchise. Trancas most recently produced the successful Halloween feature trilogy for Miramax and Blumhouse directed by David Gordon Green.
“We couldn’t be more excited to bring Halloween to television,” Helwig said. “We are thrilled to expand our long and successful partnership with Trancas and the brilliant Malek Akkad in introducing this iconic franchise to a new form of storytelling and a new generation of fans.”
Jointly controlling both the film and TV rights would allow Miramax and Trancas to map out an integrated film-TV universe.
“Trancas International Films is extremely enthused to be expanding our long-standing relationship with Miramax, and we look forward to working with Marc Helwig and the entire team in creating this new chapter,” Akkad said.
No one is commenting but I hear Miramax, alongside other companies with long horror traditions such as A24 and Blumhouse, had been locked in a tight race over the past several weeks for the Halloween TV rights.
There has been an increased premium put on well known titles amid audience fragmentation in the streaming era where it’s getting harder to launch a new franchise. IP of the caliber of Halloween rarely becomes available, which explains the big interest and fierce bidding for the TV rights, especially on the heels of the very successful movie revival.
The Halloween film franchise consists of 13 titles, starting with the 1978 original, co-written and directed by John Carpenter. They focus primarily on Michael Myers, who was committed to a sanitarium as a child for the murder of his sister. He escapes 15 years later to stalk and kill the people of the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois on Halloween, with babysitter Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence) as the main protagonists trying to stop him.
The franchise had gone dormant for nine years when a direct sequel to the original film was released in 2018. It was the first in the hit Halloween trilogy centered on Curtis’ Laurie Strode, who waited for Michael Myers to pursue her. The sequel, Halloween Kills, was released in 2021, followed by the third and final film, Halloween Ends, in October 2022. Giving closure to the film series’ main storyline, Strode and Myers faced off for one last time, and Curtis exited the franchise after 44 years.
Since Helwig took over Miramax Television three years ago, the division has landed three on-air series — more than the company had produced in the previous decade: Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen at Netflix, Project Greenlight with Issa Rae at Max and The Turkish Detective at Paramount.
Mining the indie studio’s library of IP has been a main objective with series in development based on such Miramax movies as Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Gangs of New York, Chocolat, The English Patient and Prêt-à-Porter, in addition to the Project Greenlight revival and the upcoming series adaptation of The Gentlemen.
Securing the Halloween TV rights fits right into that strategy as the film title is historically associated with the Miramax brand.
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