Jamie Lee Curtis Talks Halloween and Writing Her Own Eco-Horror Film
Jamie Lee Curtis might soon add "movie director" to her resume.
The actress, who previously directed an episode of Scream Queens and Anything But Love, revealed she's recently penned a script she hopes to bring to the screen.
"I left [filming 2018's Halloween] and went home and wrote a script because I saw how fun and creative it can be," Curtis told E! News while in Sydney. "The truth is, I've made movies for a long time, and I think I'd just lost that spark of how fun it is."
While her screenplay isn't related to Halloween, it is in the horror genre—"eco-horror", in fact.
"I wrote an original screenplay in three weeks. I've never written a script in my life," the 59-year-old said. "I actually had to hire somebody to teach me how to use Final Draft. I was like, how do you work it?"
Curtis is currently in Australia on what she calls her "victory lap" tour after Halloween celebrated a massive US opening weekend, the biggest horror movie opening with a female lead and the biggest move opening with a female lead over 55.
"We didn't know if the movie was going to be successful. I was getting a lot of good feelings, but we didn't know if the movie was actually going to work or not, in the sense of people going," the daughter of Hollywood icons Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh said. "We knew that it worked creatively because we loved it, but you never know."
As a direct sequel to the original Halloween, this installation sees Curtis' Laurie Strode coping with the trauma of what happened on Halloween in 1978 and the effects it had on generations of her family. And while buzz for a new Halloween sequel is building, Curtis admits, "We don't know what we're doing."
Still, with her first movie script under her belt, the Hollywood legend is ready to launch a new chapter.
"That's the gift. The gift from Halloween was my desire to create," she said. "Despite the victory lap tour and big box office numbers…the real benefit for me is that it sparked a creative spark that had been a little dormant."
Halloween is in Australian cinemas from October 25.
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