The strange-but-true story of why Michael Myers got fired as the director of ‘Hook’: “Which I’m pissed at”
The rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia can often have some pretty powerful lenses, with Steven Spielberg’s Hook one of the many beneficiaries. It’s not one of the filmmaker’s best movies, and he knows it, but how would it have turned out had it been directed by the guy who played Michael Myers?
A blockbuster fantasy featuring a star-studded cast that was ultimately helmed by one of the greatest directors in cinema history being developed as a project for an actor best known for terrorising Jamie Lee Curtis in the Halloween franchise sounds ridiculous, but it’s 100% true.
Nick Castle played the William Shatner mask-wearing mass murderer in John Carpenter’s classic 1978 original, before reprising the role in David Gordon Green’s sequel trilogy. That cemented him as a horror icon, but he could have wormed his way into the hearts of the generation who adore Hook with every fibre of their being, too.
The swashbuckling caper was a hit at the box office, earning over $300million, and earned five Academy Award nominations in the technical categories, but it was hardly a critical darling. Julia Roberts had a thoroughly miserable time making it, and she wasn’t the only one, with Spielberg not exactly a fan.
In fact, the highest-grossing director in cinema history admitted that he doesn’t like the movie, which isn’t something he often says about his own back catalogue, The Lost World: Jurassic Park excluded. It was Castle’s baby, but once big names started circling the picture, he found himself cast adrift, although reports that he netted a $500,000 settlement for his troubles may have softened the blow.
“I developed that screenplay, and the producer went to the studio with it, and we came up with a great first draft,” he explained to Script. “We sent it to the people that eventually were in the movie, Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams. And we were basically waiting for a green light. Then, the new studio head, this is where things get very political, their new studio head saw me, just not as a director.”
That would be Tristar Pictures chief Mike Medavoy, who thought that Hook could use a more proven and eye-catching appointment behind the camera. Since Spielberg had previously been developing a Peter Pan film before placing it on the back burner, he was the obvious candidate, casting Castle out into the cold.
“He just thought this was too big a movie to lay at the incompetent hands of Mr Nick Castle,” the boiler suit-clad serial killer explained. “So that’s when it all changed. Steven came on board after a while. He’d always wanted to do a Peter Pan movie. Everyone always knew that. And I think when he heard about this, he got very excited about it.”
Once the dust had settled, the irony wasn’t lost on Castle, who accurately noted that after he was deposed, Hook became “Steven’s least favourite movie, which I’m pissed at because I always saw that it was going to be.” As bizarre as it sounds, there’s an alternate timeline where the movie that children of the ’90s will defend to the death was directed by Laurie Strode’s arch-nemesis.
