‘Friday the 13th’ May Return to Theaters With Its Original Director
After many years of legal battles, Friday the 13th is back. And it’s looking like one of the franchise’s creators is coming back, too.
Friday the 13th is the franchise that arguably sets the tone for ’80s slashers. Something in the glut of the gore and the horniness of the teens is definitive. The willingness to release a new movie nearly every year makes Friday the 13th a celebration of excess helps, too.
But nothing lasts forever, right? And after ‘Jason Takes Manhattan’ in ’89, our Mr. Voorhees appears less and less. After a 2009 remake, he of the machete and the hockey mask vanishes entirely. Unlike other franchise horror villains, the reason for Jason’s absence is complicated.
Jason’s Complicated History
In 2010, a lawsuit begins between director Sean S. Cunningham and writer Victor Miller. The short version is this: Cunningham is the one collecting royalties, but, as the one behind the creation of Camp Crystal Lake, Pamela Voorhees, and Jason himself, Miller believes the copywrite is his. And that means Cunningham potentially owes Miller A LOT of money.
And while this issue fights in court, the franchise languishes. Thankfully some semblance of an agreement was reached. We already know there’s a Bryan Fuller prequel series about Crystal Lake coming to Peacock. However, it’s looking like Cunningham may have a movie up his sleeve as well.
Courtesy of Paramount Pictures
Jason Retakes the Movies
While Bryan Fuller and Victor Miller work together on the Crystal Lake prequel for Peacock, there is another project which Sean Cunningham very much seems to want – and that’s a new Friday the 13th movie. And while the former Friday director works on his new project The Night Driver with scribe Jeff Locker and director Jeremy Weiss, the possibility of a new entry into the classic franchise came up.
“Sean hired me to do a rewrite on The Night Driver and after working closely with director Jeremy Weiss and him on that, we naturally got to talking about Friday the 13th and House,” says Jeff Locker in an interview with Bloody Disgusting. “Jeremy and I pitched our dream reboot of Friday the 13th with Sean’s blessing to keep developing it with him.”
Naturally, there’s the Peacock series and the complexity of the lawsuit ruling to contend with. “Obviously, the prequel TV series has reignited interest in a new film,” says Locker. “So we’re hoping the surrounding excitement will inspire both sides to come together and give us Jason on the big screen again for the first time in 14 years. But we also have a Plan B for a sequel to the original we think fans will absolutely love and should avoid any legal entanglements.”
Courtesy of Orion Pictures
Can This Actually Work?
Leaving legality aside (we are not lawyers) there is a major precedent that suggests two different Friday continuations can work. There’s another major horror franchise that has a similar falling out between creatives: Night of the Living Dead.
The original George Romero zombie classic has another name attached: John Russo. And there was a bit of a squabble over who had the rights going forward. The way that shakes out is, to put it in the simplest terms: Romero gets the franchise and Russo gets the term “Living Dead”. That is why Romero’s subsequent films are Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead as opposed to Dawn of the Living Dead and so on and so forth.
And while Romero’s zombie continuation remains iconic, Russo makes his own follow-up films that ain’t too shabby. Russo brings Alien scribe Dan O’Bannon aboard and he writes and directs the ’80s classic Return of the Living Dead. And in addition to being this black punk comedy Return also introduces the fast-moving brain-eating zombies into the undead canon.
We know two different Friday the 13th worlds can work because two divergent Night of the Living Dead franchises worked. Whether or not it actually happens is another matter. But color us intrigued to see what Cunningham’s new team has up their sleeve.
