Summary

  • John Carpenter explains that his franchises probably won't cross over due to different entities owning the rights to the movies, which could result in expensive lawsuits.
  • Carpenter has kickstarted a few franchises, including Halloween and Escape from New York.
  • At a New York Comic Con panel, the director shared his dislike for the potential legal consequences of incorporating characters like Snake Plissken in a horror movie.

John Carpenter has shared a candid reason that franchises he has started probably won't cross over. The director, who is best known for his work in the horror and science fiction genres, co-wrote and directed the first movie in the massive Halloween franchise, which now includes 13 movies and a possible upcoming TV adaptation. At the time of writing, he has directed 18 theatrical features through 2010's The Ward and has only recently returned to directing, helming an episode of the Peacock docudrama show Suburban Screams.

Screen Rant was in attendance at John Carpenter's panel at New York Comic Con, during which a fan asked him about a possible crossover between his various franchises. The filmmaker bluntly shut down the idea, explaining that they are owned by different entities, so if Kurt Russell's Snake Plissken from Escape from New York and Escape from L.A. were to appear in a horror movie, the owners would get mad, and "when they get mad, they’ll sue me, I don’t like that." Read Carpenter's full quote below:

The problem is there are a lot of different people who own the rights to the various movies, so if I put Snake Plissken in a horror movie, people are going to get mad, and when they get mad, they’ll sue me, I don’t like that.

John Carpenter's Franchises Explained

Michael Myers looking over a balcony holding a knife in Halloween 1978

While John Carpenter is a director who is mostly known for helming original movies, he has either spawned or participated in quite a few franchises over the years. While Escape from L.A. is the only sequel he has directed to one of his own movies, he has been heavily involved in the Halloween franchise at various stages of its development. This includes co-writing the screenplay for Halloween II and co-composing the score for that movie, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and David Gordon Green's new Halloween trilogy.

Beyond those two franchises, the only other proper franchise to be born from one of Carpenter's works was Vampires. That 1998 outing was followed by the direct-to-video sequels Vampires: Los Muertos and Vampires: The Turning. Additionally, his 1982 remake of The Thing From Another World, titled The Thing, did receive a directly related prequel in 2011 sharing the same name as its predecessor, though no further entries have followed that title.

In addition to remaking The Thing, John Carpenter also remade the 1960 British classic Village of the Damned in 1995 and co-composed the score for the 2022 remake of Firestarter. Several of his own movies have been remade as well, including Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, and The Fog. While this is an expansive resume of franchises and various IP projects, the complicated rights behind them all seem to have prevented any real possibility of a major crossover.