10 Movies That Accidentally Set Up Sequels
9. Halloween (1978)
Back in 1978, not even the most ambitious Hollywood producer could've anticipated that John Carpenter's low-budget slasher flick Halloween would spawn a dozen subsequent movies over the next 45 years.
And while it's impossible to view Halloween as anything but one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time, back when Carpenter was making the original, he saw it as nothing more than a one-off.
The ending, where Michael Myers (Nick Castle) is shot off a balcony by Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) and vanishes into the night, was simply intended to provide the audience with a final jolt, rather than imply that Myers would return to kill again (and again). Carpenter told the New York Times in 2018:
"Michael's disappearance at the end of the first film makes you gasp... And I wanted to leave the audience that way. I didn't want any sequels. Boy, was I wrong, huh?"
It's easy to see Carpenter's viewpoint as naive today, but given that Halloween's production predated the slasher movie boom of the 1980s, it seems a tad more reasonable within that context.
Though Carpenter opted not to direct Halloween II in 1981, he did return as co-writer, before unsuccessfully attempting to steer the series away from Michael Myers entirely with the tangential, divisive Halloween III: Season of the Witch.