While horror legend John Carpenter celebrates his 70th birthday on January 16th, Rotten Tomatoes accidentally claimed the filmmaker is dead on their Twitter feed. John Carpenter had one of the best creative runs of any American filmmaker and was responsible for movies like Halloween , Escape From New York, The Thing , Big Trouble In Little China and They Live. Beyond directing he’s worn many other hats on his work including writing, producing, editing and composing the music.

Carpenter’s distinct cinematic style and music has been a major influence on filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino, Adam Wingard and Robert Rodriguez, with the latter even lined up to direct the Escape From New York remake. Carpenter has been semi-retired from filmmaking for a while now, with his last theatrical release being The Ward in 2011. Since then he’s focused on music, releasing two albums of original material titled Lost Themes and Lost Themes II in 2015 and 2016 respectively, and he’s even toured and played his music live.



While Carpenter prepares to celebrate his 70th birthday, his fans may have gotten a bit of scare while looking at Rotten Tomatoes Twitter feed. The review aggregator tweeted a message to celebrate the filmmaker’s birthday – without seeming to realize John Carpenter is very much alive and well. The post has since been deleted, but you can see a screen shot of it below:



Carpenter belongs to a distinct group of filmmakers known as the Masters Of Horror, and sadly in recent years other legendary members of that group such as Wes Craven , Tobe Hooper and George Romero have all passed on. It’s possible whoever posted the tweet confused Carpenter with one of his late contemporaries, but it’s something of an awkward mistake regardless.


This year, Carpenter will return to the Halloween franchise for the first time since 1982’s divisive sequel Halloween III: Season Of The Witch, the only entry not to feature Michael Myers. Carpenter will serve as executive producer on the new film, in addition to composing the music. The new Halloween will reunite him with Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode , while Blumhouse will produce and David Gordon Green will direct. Carpenter is also due to direct the pilot episode for upcoming anthology series Tales For A Halloween Night , based on the graphic novel of the same name


While horror fans eagerly await the release of the next Halloween, Screen Rant would like to wish John Carpenter a happy 70th birthday.