TRICK ’R TREAT Creator Michael Dougherty Is Building a New Animated World for Sam Outside the Movie Franchise

While we're all still waiting for Trick ’r Treat 2 to finally happen, writer and director Michael Dougherty isn't sitting around waiting for Hollywood to give him permission to tell more stories featuring Sam.

Instead, he's taken matters into his own hands, teaming up with a group of talented animators and filmmakers to create a collection of new Halloween shorts featuring everyone's favorite little burlap-sack-wearing troublemaker.

As someone who considers Trick ’r Treat my all-time favorite Halloween movie, I love seeing Sam continue to evolve beyond the original film. He's such a great character, and there's something particularly cool about seeing different artists put their own twisted spin on him.

During a Q&A at the FilmQuest Film Festival, moderated by Bill Earl of Variety, Dougherty explained that he's able to pursue these projects independently because of a deal he made with Legendary Pictures roughly 20 years ago.

Although Legendary controls Trick ’r Treat, Dougherty retained the rights to Season's Greetings, the animated short film in which Sam originally appeared.

Dougherty explained: “Legendary has Trick ’r Treat, but as I mentioned earlier, Sam was born in a short film called ‘Season's Greetings.’ When I negotiated my deal with Legendary 20 years ago, I retained the rights to the short film and the copyright.

“So I thought, why not get together with some friends and collaborators and make some fun new Sam stuff We started a whole set of social media channels on Instagram and YouTube. All of the new Sam stuff that we're making is rooted in the short film, not Trick ’r Treat. I know that sounds complicated, but if you see them, you'll get it.”

So, Dougherty isn't producing these shorts as official extensions of Legendary's movie franchise. Instead, he's building on the original animated version of Sam, which gives him the freedom to experiment with the character without waiting for a studio to approve another feature film.

He's also making it easy for fans to follow along. During the Q&A, Dougherty encouraged the audience to check out Sam: the Soul of Halloween on Instagram, where the new shorts and other Halloween content are being shared.

He explained: “On there, you'll see some short-form content that we're dropping all month long. I brought in some collaborators, including my old friend from Witching Season Films, who's making some as well."

“I basically went around and found a bunch of other weirdos and misfits whose work I've admired over the years on Instagram and YouTube. I was like, ‘Hey, do you want to make some cool Sam stuff?’ It's been a ton of fun, truly.”

I like Dougherty's approach to working with these filmmakers. Rather than tightly controlling every detail of how Sam appears or behaves, he's giving the artists room to explore their own ideas.

When Earl asked whether the collaborators had to follow specific creative rules, Dougherty said: “Mostly the latter. It was fun to see where their imaginations would take them and allow them to do their own spin on things.”

One of those collaborators comes from Witching Season Films, whose work Dougherty discovered through a shared appreciation for the eerie opening credits of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

It's a wonderfully specific connection, but it makes perfect sense for Dougherty. Those opening credits are packed with autumn atmosphere, and that same love of Halloween imagery runs throughout his work.

He also brought in longtime collaborator Breehn Burns, who helped develop Sam's look for Trick ’r Treat and has worked with Dougherty on animation projects for years.

But some of the other collaborations are considerably stranger. Dougherty described recruiting a creator behind the YouTube channel Dinosaur Dinner Theater, which takes old television commercials and replaces their original narration with disturbing new voiceovers.

“Michael's channel, Witching Season Films, I discovered years ago because he has a mutual obsession with, and this is gonna sound weird, but you'll get it, the opening credits of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers.

“Because they're so atmospheric and weird. I was a fan of his for a long time, so we started teaming up. Breehn was an easy call to make too, because we've been working together on animation stuff for so long. Then I just went down this list.

“There's one gentleman who has a YouTube channel called Dinosaur Dinner Theater. All he does is find old TV commercials from the '80s, and then he changes the voiceover to some of the most fucked-up, disturbing stuff.

“He'll find Cabbage Patch Kids commercials and just change the narration. So I gave him this educational film. It was a Halloween safety film from the mid-'80s. I was like, ‘Do your magic with it. Stick Sam in it and do your magic with it. He came back with something so weird… But I had no notes, and I always have notes.

“It's been really fun just handing Sam off, seeing what they do with him, and seeing what comes back.”

Sam has always felt like a character who could exist in all kinds of Halloween stories, from creepy animated shorts to full-blown horror movies. Letting different filmmakers play with him could lead to some wonderfully bizarre creations.

One of the shorts Dougherty discussed was a stop-motion piece made by an animator in Shanghai. It features Sam delivering some Halloween punishment to a woman who makes the mistake of throwing away her jack-o'-lantern too early. That sounds exactly like the kind of thing Sam would do!

Dougherty shared: “That claymation piece we just released, I think, was done by a stop-motion animator in Shanghai. It shows Sam dishing out some justice to a Karen who gets rid of her jack-o'-lantern a little too early.

“I've never seen Sam done in stop-motion or claymation. It was a similar process where I was like, ‘Let's just see what we can come up with.’ It's completely independent. I'm self-financing all of it. But it's been fun gathering these other weirdos and misfits and making cool stuff.”

The fact that Dougherty is personally financing these shorts makes the whole endeavor even more interesting. This is a filmmaker who loves his creation and wants to keep making weird, fun Halloween stories with other artists who share that passion.

That collaborative spirit has always been part of Dougherty's creative process. When an audience member asked about designing characters like Sam and the creatures from Krampus, he explained that he usually begins with his own sketches before handing them over to artists who can take the designs further.

He said: “Whether it's Sam or Krampus or any other creatures, I like to doodle my version first and then pass it off to much more talented people to let them do their thing. That's how it's worked with Breehn, for example.

He was one of the first concept artists who took a stab at Sam, working from some of my early sketches. Same thing with Wētā Workshop. When we did Krampus, I had some doodles of the gingerbread men, for example, and they just sort of took the ball and ran with it. It's fun working with people who are so much better artists than I could ever hope to be.”

It's awesome to see that same philosophy carrying over into these independent Sam projects, especially with Dougherty giving his collaborators so much freedom.

Of course, I'd still love nothing more than to see Dougherty finally get the opportunity to make Trick ’r Treat 2. But until that happens, I'm glad Sam isn't being left on the shelf.

There's something fitting about the little guardian of Halloween finding new ways to haunt us, whether that's through a creepy stop-motion short, a twisted vintage safety film, or whatever other madness Dougherty and his collaborators come up with next.

You can look for the new content through Sam the Soul of Halloween on Instagram and YouTube. I’ve included some of the short below!