Danny McBride has been doing the press rounds for Alien: Covenant and he just can’t stop saying the right things about Halloween. McBride and director/co-writer David Gordon Green were recruited by Blumhouse to reboot the iconic horror franchise (with the blessing of John Carpenter himself), and with the film slated to land in theaters next fall, the duo is hard at work on the script.

McBride told Variety:

We are writing pretty furiously right now and we’re trying to shoot it this fall. We want to try and get it out for the 40th anniversary next year, so we are deep in the trenches of the script and hammering away.

He also offered up some details on their approach to Michael Myers while appearing on the Empire Podcast, and bottom line, they’re keeping it simple.

I think we’re just trying to strip it down and just take it back to what was so good about the original. It was just very simple and just achieved that level of horror that wasn’t corny. And it wasn’t turning Michael Myers into some supernatural being that couldn’t be killed— that stuff to me isn’t scary. I want to be scared by something that I really think could happen. I think it’s much more horrifying to be scared by someone standing in the shadows while you’re taking the trash out as opposed to someone who can’t be killed pursuing you.

McBride expanded on his thoughts a bit more during a visit to the Jim Norton & Sam Roberts Show, and he’s all about making the iconic slasher villain real and scary again.

“It’s not a reboot, it’s not gonna be a rehash. It’s a continuation of Michael Myers – where we’re choosing to continue it from, you’ll have to see when the movie comes out,” McBride explained. “I’d already seen all these movies but I’ve really been studying them now, and just thinking about all the people that have been hired to make a Michael Myers movie. Just trying to avoid any mistakes that those people might’ve made. The first Halloween is scary as shit. And the second Halloween is scary, but not as scary. And then from there, it isn’t as scary. And I really think that what happens with it is that he basically becomes Frankenstein. No matter what anyone hits him with, he’s not gonna die. There’s no suspense.”

“We’re just trying to play with that. Make him real. Not make him real by giving him some crazy backstory either. Just getting back to the basics. Even the moment that they made Laurie and Michael Myers siblings – it also makes it not quite as scary. So all that kind of stuff to us… those are the things that took an amazing idea and took it somewhere it wasn’t quite as effective.”