Blink and you’ll miss it, but Bob Odenkirk has a cameo in the new slasher sequel Halloween Kills. Now playing in theaters and on Peacock, the second installment of Blumhouse’s planned Halloween trilogy picks up right from where the 2018 movie left off. As a way of acknowledging the past, director David Gordon Green also brought back several actors from the 1978 movie to reprise their roles.
It wasn’t possible to include every original character from 1978’s Halloween. John Michael Graham, who played victim Bob Simms in that first movie, has not appeared in an acting role in the four decades since. This made getting the rights to use a photo of him in the movie difficult. That presented a challenge as Green wanted to include a scene where a news broadcast shows an image of Bob as a victim of the original massacre.
Stumped as to what to do, David Gordon Green hopped on Google looking for a solution. Coincidentally, he came across an old yearbook photo of Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk. There was a certain resemblance to Odenkirk’s photo and the Bob character from the original Halloween, and that’s when the light bulb lit up over Green’s head. As Green explains in an interview with CinemaBlend:
“In the original Carpenter film, the Bob character, I wanted to have acknowledgment of all the deaths from the previous film, but we couldn’t track [the actor] down or get the rights. Somehow we couldn’t clear an image of Bob for our television news broadcast. And so I was frustrated by that because I wanted to acknowledge Bob’s death, but we couldn’t get footage of Bob. So I Googled ‘Bob 1970s High School,’ and a photo of Bob Odenkirk popped up that looked just like Bob! So I thought, ‘He’s probably easier to find; let’s go get him!'”
It was not very difficult to get ahold of Bob Odenkirk. Jamie Lee Curtis, who plays Laurie Strode in the movie, noted how Odenkirk “signed off on the rights to have his high school picture be the Bob in [the movie].” There are many other ways Green could have handled the Bob photo, but he was far too excited to consider anything else once the possibility of using Bob Odenkirk came into the picture.
“I’m a huge Bob Odenkirk fan. So that opportunity was just too juicy to ignore.”
In a way, this now means Odenkirk has portrayed a Michael Myers victim. It’s an interesting “role,” though he’s obviously best known for his role as smarmy lawyer Saul Goodman in Breaking Bad and its spinoff series Better Call Saul. Odenkirk also impressed viewers with a turn into the action genre as the star of Nobody earlier this year. The actor is currently working on the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul after recovering from a heart attack.
Halloween Kills is now streaming on Peacock and playing in movie theaters as part of its day-and-date release. This will be followed up by Halloween Ends, though Jason Blum hopes to continue making Halloween movies after that installment. This news comes to us from CinemaBlend.
Source: movieweb.com