In a new interview over at SuicideGirls, Tyler Mane takes advantage of this week's DVD release of Halloween to talk about his take on the character and how it all came together. When asked if he's vulnerable to typecasting after playing a hulking monster, he responds: "Man, I'm 6 foot 8. I'm gonna be typecast. It's not like I'm gonna be the romantic lead, although that wouldn't be bad. But it is what it is, and we'll just see where it goes." He also reveals that he has signed on to do another Halloween film, but Rob Zombie apparently can't be persuaded to go through with directing any further installments of the series. "I signed on [for the sequel] thinking he was going to be doing it, but Rob feels he's told his story, with a beginning, middle and an end. Who knows, you know? The one thing I've learned in this business is never say never."

In fact, Zombie seems to be up in the air about exactly where his career goes from here. Although Halloween had a nice opening weekend, Zombie seems a bit dissatisfied, having passed up the opportunity to direct Steve Niles' much-talked about script for Bigfoot and now eschewing a return to Michael Myers territory. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Zombie even says he'd like his next film to be a Western. "It's one of my favorite genres," he says. "I love John Ford, Howard Hawks."

Poor Tyler Mane. Sure, he was pretty lame as Sabretooth in the first X-Men, but that doesn't mean he should be passed over in the casting of X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After all, while he may not be a big name actor, he did just star in a successful movie (he was Michael Myers in the Halloween remake). But it appears Fox is trying to go with someone new as Victor Creed (aka Sabretooth) -- and by someone new, I don't mean an unknown; I mean someone who isn't Mane. According to CHUD.com, that someone was nearly Karl Urban, an actor familiar to fanboys as Eomer in the Lord of the Rings movies. But Urban's talks to play Creed apparently fell through, and now the studio is going for an even bigger geek-movie star: Gerard Butler. This is from another one of those tips from a "closely placed and highly trusted source," so take of it what you will. It could be true or it could not be, and even if it's true, the story is merely that Butler is being offered the role. He could very well not be interested.

But who cares what he thinks? The more important question is whether or not we are interested. Maybe if Gavin Hood were doing a 300 type of style for Wolverine -- specifically one that looked like Mark Texeira's art -- Butler would fit. Otherwise, the actor needs to be blonder, and naturally so. Maybe Butler could pass for the character with a bleach job all over, but I'd rather not be thinking about it being Butler with a bleach job all over. Remember this isn't necessarily Sabretooth we're talking about. He's likely not going to be in costume much. I wish I could find a picture of my ideal Creed look (it's from a comic about 15 years ago and he's in plain clothes, on a talk show), but I can't. I think all of the actors I always imagined were '60s western guys for some reason, anyway.

Additionally, CHUD.com has heard that Hood is trying to get Natalie Portman to play a character named Kayla. I think we should all just kind of ignore that information and hope that it is as untrue as possible.

Halloween is an oddity, because not even horror fanatics were clamoring for this franchise to be re-launched, yet here it is. We now have what amounts to a launching pad for another decade of mediocrity from the slasher genre's perennial bronze medalist. The Shape hasn't been endowed with any new qualities in this film that might potentially help him vault over Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger -- he's still going to be low man on the totem pole. Occupying that humbling position over the years hasn't necessarily meant that the Halloween series suffered any more discontinuity or shameless retcons than the competition, but there's always been a sense of dogged sameness and an aura of low expectations to each new episode of the saga, starting immediately after Carpenter's original film and going all the way through to the most recent film, which, if memory serves, had Myers chasing after Busta Rhymes in some reality show. That's why it's so perplexing that Zombie's remake recreates the same Michael we've always known -- it's almost as if he wants history to repeat itself.

In fact, all that really separates this Halloween from the 1978 version is the origin story -- it's been expanded by some 30 minutes, so that we now see young Michael (Daeg Faerch) being tortured by school bullies and living hand-to-mouth in a white-trash hellhole with a stripper mom (Sheri Moon Zombie) and a scuzzy stepfather, played by William Forsythe. Those elements combine in Michael's mind to produce a perfect storm of craziness, and he begins to talk less and less, while becoming more violent. Before you know it, he's being carted off to Smith's Grove to become the plaything of the child psychiatrist Dr. Loomis, played repeatedly by Donald Pleasance in the original series and now portrayed by Malcolm McDowell, who recently revealed that he's already signed for three films, if this one goes. What comes next anyone can guess -- Michael breaks out of his confinement and starts killing people, all in the service of some ill-defined mission to find his baby sister, who he hasn't seen since he was a little boy but has a connection to.

Tyler Mane, who will be seen in theaters nationwide this Friday as Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake, told the MTV Movie Blog that he hasn't been offered the role of The Mighty Thor, but he'd be glad to entertain the idea. As Scott Weinberg posted a little while ago, the film adaptation of Marvel Comics' take on the Norse god of thunder is being directed by Matthew Vaughn -- whose film Stardust is currently in theaters -- from a screenplay by Mark Protosevich who scripted the upcoming Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend.

"I would love to," Mane told MTV. "You never know [whether Thor will make it as a movie]. You have all those genres of the comic book characters coming to life, from the Sabretooth character I did in X-Men to all the ones that they did. It could be [the right time for Thor]. it depends on how it's done, and who writes the script. [Have they come to me] about 'Thor'? I have not heard anything yet, so we'll see. Hopefully, somebody's out there writing it for me like Rob [Zombie] wrote [a role in 'Halloween'] for me."

Apparently the idea of Mane taking on the role is gathering buzz on the internet. One Cinematical reader suggested Mane in response to Scott's post, but then again there were also votes for Jason Mewes and Jesus. That guy who played Thor in the Marvel Super Heroes Got Milk? commercial wasn't bad (click here to refresh your memory). Mane certainly does seem like a viable candidate for flinging the uru hammer Mjolnir at the bad guys. Actually, I suppose the real test of any actor who might play Thor is his ability to pronounce Mjolnir.

With a little over a month to go before the release of Rob Zombie's Halloween, the director has released a whole slew of character posters on his MySpace page. They're not nearly as high-quality as the Golden Compass character sheets we brought you recently -- they all have the same background, so its mostly a cut and paste type of job, but they're not bad. There are posters for pretty much every major character here, from Scout-Taylor Compton as (a presumably smaller-chested) Laurie Strode to Malcolm McDowell as Dr. Loomis. There are two for Michael Myers, one of Tyler Mane as the adult, masked Michael and one of Daeg Faerch as the young Myers, with some kind of party hat pushed up onto his head and a creepy look on his face. There are even some posters for Danny Trejo, William Forsythe and Udo Kier -- I didn't even know the first two were in the movie until seeing these posters.

Also in his MySpace update, Zombie lets fans know that the official website for the film has been updated, with some new images in the cast bio sections. I took a look, and they do look like pics I haven't seen floating around yet, so hop on over if you're a Zombie-head. As of now, Halloween has its ticket punched for August 31, when the competition will be Balls of Fury, the Jennifer Lopez festival film Bordertown and Kevin Bacon's Death Sentence, which is being directed by another horror mainstay, James Wan. Looks like Wan isn't afraid to go head-to-head on this one -- we'll see who wins.

The folks over at Bloody-disgusting.com have scored an interesting exclusive -- the first photo of Rob Zombie's new Michael Myers in full costume. For my money, he looks almost exactly the same as the old Michael Myers, although in this shot he looks a little worse for wear. He might have been shooting a scene to take place near the end of the film, rather than the beginning, when his mask would presumably be a bit less dirty and roughed-up. Myers is, of course, played by Tyler Mane, who was Sabretooth in the first X-Men film. Even though Myers looks pretty much exactly the same, Zombie has gone on record as saying that his Halloween is not a shot-for-shot remake but "a bit of a prequel and a remake combined," which sounds, frankly, just confusing to me. Shouldn't horror franchises start caring a little bit more about consistency, or am I just kidding myself?

In other Halloween news, the cast continues to grow -- Zombie announced recently the addition of actor Richard Fancy to the cast. Fancy, who will play a character called Dean Carpenter, is one of those actors who you recognize as soon as you see his face, even though it would be hard to pinpoint from memory a handful of big films he's been in. The major cast is already complete, with 18-year old actress Scout Taylor-Compton taking on the iconic role of Laurie Strode, originally made famous by Jamie Lee Curtis.

Report #1: Newcomer Daeg Faerch will be playing the young Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween remake.

Report #2: Longtime character actor Malcolm McDowell will be playing Mike's nemesis, Dr. Loomis, a role made famous by the adorably overacting Donald Pleasance.

Report #3: Hulking (and generally silent) actor Tyler Mane will be playing "The Shape" himself: The grown-up and perpetually P.O.'ed Michael Myers.

And yes, now comes Report #4, because Rob Zombie seems to think that if he doles out his casting tidbits one droplet at a time, it'll get the horror fans all extra-jazzed for this sadly inevitable remake. And here I am, playing along:

You guys know Dee Wallace-Stone? Heck. sure you do: She was in the original Hills Have Eyes and The Howling and Cujo -- OK fine, she was the mom from E.T. Toldja you know who she is! According to a report at MyZombieSpace, Dee has been signed to play Mrs. Strode, mother to main character Laurie Strode. (No, we don't yet know who'll be playing Laurie Strode. It's Bob Zombie's way of keeping his blog popular.)

We do have some additional cast members to share, though: Pat Skipper will be playing Laurie's dad, William Forsythe will be playing an abusive jerk and Sheri Moon Zombie will be playing Michael Myers' mom -- 'cuz it's good to be the director's hot wife.

First we learned who'd be playing the young version of Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's new Halloween rendition and then we got the news on who'll be stepping into the seminal role of Dr. Loomis -- and now we know who's been cast as the main maniac himself. Hulking Canadian actor Tyler Mane will be donning the infamous mask as he steps into the role of, yep, Michael Myers. (In the original Halloween, "the shape" was played by Nick Castle, a young actor who later went on to write, co-write or direct movies like Escape from New York, The Last Starfighter and The Boy Who Could Fly.)

If Tyler Mane's name sounds familiar, then you're probably someone who's seen X-Men (he played Sabretooth), The Scorpion King (Barbarian), Black Mask 2 (Thorn), Troy (Ajax) and The Devil's Rejects (Rufus). According to Bloody-Disgusting.com, Halloween 4 & 5 actress Danielle Harris is also rumored to make an appearance in Zombie's Halloween.

At this point I'd just ask Rob to save his whole cast list and treat us to a simple press release when the process is done with. These one-at-a-time cast member announcements are getting a bit tiresome. But yeah, Tyler Mane. Cool. I guess.