Jamie Lee Curtis reveals surprising truth about returning to Halloween

Turns out, Jamie Lee Curtis nearly walked away from her iconic scream-queen comeback before it even began.

Speaking at the SXSW Film Festival 2026 on March 14, the actress revealed she probably wouldn’t have signed on to the modern Halloween revival if she’d known it was destined to become a full trilogy.

Curtis famously returned as Laurie Strode in the reboot and its follow-ups, Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends – but at first, she believed it was a one-and-done deal.

“The only reason I am sitting in this chair today is because of Jason. Jason Blum, who runs Blumhouse, is the one who brought back the Halloween movies,” Curtis said, referencing Jason Blum and his production company Blumhouse Productions.

Then came the twist.

“If they had come to me and said it’s going to be a trilogy, I don’t think I would have said yes,” she admitted. “Jason Blum is notoriously cheap. How do you make low-budget movies? You don’t pay people. That’s the model.”

But Curtis, a Hollywood veteran, quickly realized she had some leverage.

“While we were editing and doing the mix, David said, ‘You know it’s a trilogy.’ I was like, ‘Uh, no.’ I went to Jason Blum and said, ‘I have some ideas, maybe you could give me a first look deal, just pay me a little money,’” she recalled.

“I said to Jason, ‘How about a little development deal?’ And I owed him two Halloween movies, so what was he gonna say?”

The deal helped fund projects with filmmaker Russell Goldman, including their 2023 graphic novel Mother Nature and the upcoming film Sender, which premiered at SXSW.