Whenever Friday the 13th rolls around, there’s only one proper thing to do, and that’s to watch and talk about Friday the 13th. And yes, I’m aware I’m writing this on the Saturday, but the point still stands.
Amongst yesterday’s conversation surrounding the exploits of Crystal Lake’s most notorious hockey enthusiast were some details about the planned sequel to the 2009 reboot that never materialized, released by script writing duo Damian Shannon and Mark Swift.
We talked about it. Ultimately that idea was left behind… because we wanted it for the sequel! Yes, here for the first time ever, can confirm that we had extended flashbacks in the unmade winter sequel with Pamela and Elias. Oh and Pamela was the fucking terrifying one…
— Shannon & Swift (@shannonandswift) March 13, 2020
The pair also shared pages from the script, which revealed a title of Friday the 13th: Camp Blood – The Death of Jason Voorhees, and an opening scene featuring a pair of friends playing hockey on the frozen lake discovering the body of Whitney Miller (Amanda Righetti’s heroine from the first movie) preserved beneath the ice, only for Jason to appear from his subterranean lair and begin the slaughter anew.
A sequel had always been intended for the reboot movie, but a number of issues prevented the project from getting off the ground, and still going on is a lawsuit between franchise producer Sean S. Cunningham and the original film’s writer Victor Miller, where Miller is attempting to terminate copyright due to US law allowing a creator to do so 35 years after the fact, while Cunningham is arguing he has no right to do so as the original script was created under a work for hire contract.
Despite the proposed title of the follow up film, it’s highly unlikely that the movie would have seen Jason’s permanent demise, as it’s him that audiences come to see. Besides, he has been ‘killed’ before, most notably by Tommy Jarvis in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, the increasingly inaccurately named fourth installment of the series
The winter setting of the script would certainly give the film a different visual aesthetic though, and the weather conditions would have made escaping Jason that much more complicated, not to mention the contrast of white snow and crimson viscera when they inevitably failed. Additionally, the use of Jason’s parents in flashback would have allowed for the exploration of exactly what turned him into a silent and remorseless killer. With the lawsuit preventing the series continuing scheduled to soon be resolved though, perhaps this vision for Friday the 13th might yet be brought to life.
