Ah, MySpace. Electronic land of underage networking, life-affirming friend counts, and…major motion picture casting announcements?
In the newest use of MySpace for movie marketing purposes, rocker-turned-director Rob Zombie has been doling out pieces of casting information for his upcoming horror sequel "Halloween" on the film’s MySpace page. The latest bit, in case you’re not one of the page’s 39,789 friends, names 17-year-old Scout Taylor-Compton as the new Laurie Strode (AKA the Jamie Lee Curtis role from the original John Carpenter flick).
Who is Scout Taylor-Compton? You may remember her from such roles as Dean’s precocious little sister on "Gilmore Girls," a high-school outcast in "Sleepover," a big sister on the Disney series "That’s So Raven"…and that headline-grabbing few weeks in 2005 when she ran away from home, only to be found safe at a friend’s house.
Taylor-Compton also appears in the recent Sundance child-abuse film, "An American Crime" (as one of Catherine Keener‘s misled children), which sets the stage darkly enough for her to play the muse of Mike Myers’ obsessive rampage in Zombie’s sure-to-revolt "Halloween" update.
In Zombie’s "Halloween" prequel/remake (which will be the ninth in the series), the masked Myers is mistakenly released from a mental hospital after 17 years and comes looking for Laurie, killing what’s sure to be many, many people along the way. Shooting was to begin yesterday, according to reports.
From Zombie’s "Halloween" MySpace page
Zombie, meanwhile, has been leaving tantalizing posts just about every day regarding the rest of his cast (which includes wife Sheri Moon Zombie, Brad Dourif, Danny Trejo, Malcolm McDowell, William Forsythe, Ken Foree, Adrienne Barbeau, Clint Howard, Udo Kier), many of whom are playing characters that also appear in the original. Mike Myers, whose character development will ostensibly be the focus of the film (rather than the lives and deaths of supporting players, Zombie has said) will be played by — drumroll please — Tyler Mane (former pro WCW wrestler Big Sky best known as Sabretooth in "X-Men").
Mark your calendars for "Halloween"’s release on August 31, 2007.
