If it wasn’t for the franchise being caught up in red tape, you can guarantee we’d have seen a new iteration of Friday the 13th by now. Almost every major horror property is in a constant state of reinvention, and looking at the success David Gordon Green has experienced with Halloween, a formula he’s looking to replicate on both HBO’s Hellraiser series and Universal’s eye-wateringly expensive new Exorcist trilogy, Jason Voorhees must be green with envy under his signature hockey mask.
Original writer Victor Miller put forward a claim to the rights back in 2018, with the courts ruling in his favor, although Sean Cunningham challenged the verdict on appeal and we’re still waiting on the results. In another twist, Cunningham then sued New Line Cinema, Paramount and Warner Bros. over unpaid profits, accusing them of some creative accounting that swindled him out of a great deal of money.
For a while, it looked like there may be no end in sight for Friday the 13th‘s legal and contractual woes, but Corey Feldman of all all people claims to have the inside track, after offering in a new interview that the matter may be drawing to a close.
“I think if we do any reboots, the reboot should be the Tommy vs. Jason reboot. Interestingly enough, some guy came up to me at a party, this is true, two weeks ago, and said he has resolved the rights issues. He’s a lawyer, and he has resolved the rights issues around Friday the 13th, and that things are working out, and now they’ll be able to start making Friday the 13th movies again.”
Of course, we shouldn’t have to point out that Corey Feldman saying some dude at a party told him is hardly a guarantee that the tangled web of rights issues are over and done with, but whoever ends up rebooting Friday the 13th will have acquired themselves a cash cow.
Inevitably, Feldman is also pitching for a return as Tommy Jarvis, so maybe his new lawyer buddy can put in a good word for him if and when the matter is resolved at long last.
