After 4 rounds of polling on horror social media John Carpenter is voted by the online horror fan community as their favorite horror filmmaker. He is most known for creating the Halloween film franchise. His movies have a life time gross of $288 million dollars. In 2017 he will return to executive produce his most successful film with a Halloween reboot. Carpenter was quoted as saying, "I'm committed to making the 10th sequel the scariest of them all." He is in discussions to score the film and is listed on wikipedia as the films director, although no major announcement has been made on the films director.

Carpenter was influenced by early science fiction and horror movies as a child growing up in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He transferred to USC in 1968 but dropped out deciding to film his first feature film instead. Dark Star was released in 1974 produced on a budget of only $60,000 and co-written by Dan O'Bannon who went on to write the movie script for Alien. Alien borrowed a lot of ideas from Dark Star.

After directing 18 feature films, he never repeated the financial success of the original Halloween (1978) movie. During his career, he made a lot of smaller budget films that gained cult status with the fans. The science fiction film The Thing (1982) is loved for its extreme gore factor. The Escape From New York (1981) franchise also has a particularly loyal cult fan base.

A few factors play into John Carpenter winning the online polls as their favorite horror film maker. The obvious is the love for the Halloween film series. During his entire career, he worked inside the horror niche. The number of films he has created that has cult status also play into his popularity.

The editor of [horrorvillains.com](http://www.horrorvillains.com/) noted that "John Carpenter and films he has either written or directed get the most emails on the website when we ask which character to feature next."