There are few success stories in horror cinema like Jason Blum’s Blumhouse Productions. The studio began its winning streak with 2009’s Paranormal Activity, which grossed $193 million on a $15,000 budget, making it the most profitable movie in Hollywood history. Since then, they’ve gone on to produce hit after hit, including the Insidious, Purge and Sinister franchises. With 2017’s outstanding Get Out, they even achieved awards success, walking away with a Golden Globe (confusingly for Best Comedy/Musical).
Now, it looks as if they might have set their sights on reviving one of the most iconic franchises in horror history:Â Friday the 13th. Admittedly, this isn’t based on anything concrete from the studio, but there are a couple of announcements and interviews that seem to point in this direction.
Prime among them is Blumhouse announcing a trio of upcoming release dates without confirming which films they’ll be for. One of them is December 13th, 2019 though, which falls on a Friday. On top of that, Blumhouse founder Jason Blum, while promoting Insidious: The Last Key in an interview with CinePOP, was asked what franchise he’d like to revive next, and said:
“You know, I really wanted to do Friday the 13th. I would love to do that movie. Maybe someday we’ll get do to that one.”
Furthermore, having the company take a stab at Jason Voorhees also fits in well with Blumhouse’s expansive ambitions, perhaps best exemplified in their surprise announcement of a Jamie Lee Curtis-starring Halloween movie that continues directly on from the original.
In the past few years, there’ve been a few abortive attempts to breathe some life back into Jason’s mouldering bones, but they’ve all (appropriately enough for the character) wound up stuck in development hell (the less said about the awful 2009 reboot the better). Not only that, but the brilliant Friday the 13th video game proves that there’s still interest in the property.
Fingers crossed, then, that all these omens pave the way for one of the scariest slashers of all-time to make a triumphant return on the big screen. After all, if anyone can do Friday the 13th justice, it’s Blumhouse.
