If you’ve been keeping up to date on the current legal messiness around the Friday the 13th franchise, you’ll know that the long-running slasher property is in a state of paralysis, with studios unable to release any new Jason movies for the time being. All the same, Platinum Dunes co-founder Andrew Form hasn’t given up hope that one day the hockey-masked murderer will make his return, presumably with a whole new set of teens to slaughter.
When we spoke to the producer of such horror films as A Quiet Place and The Purge series, Form assured us that the studio’s determined to resurrect their plans for another pic in the franchise once this ongoing ownership dispute is out of the way.
“There’s a lawsuit going on and the rights are a little messed up. But rest assured, we are doing everything we can to be involved with that and we wholeheartedly believe that another version, another incarnation of Friday the 13th, needs to be made and brought out to the world, and we’re gonna do everything we can to do it. Every year, we look at the schedule and say, ‘When’s the next Friday the 13th? When can we have a movie ready?’ We love Jason and we hope we can make another one.”
As well as producing the 2009 remake, Platinum Dunes is also the studio behind such franchise reboots as 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, raising the question of whether the studio would be open to returning to any of these other classic horror properties. But with the exception of a certain famous franchise about crime-fighting reptiles, Friday the 13th remains the only long-running series that Form is looking to revisit.
“Friday the 13th is the one for us, because we were so close to filming that version about a year and a half ago, and we loved the screenplay we had and we were so close on that one. I think that’s the one out of everything we’ve done in the past, except for [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles… We hope to bring another Turtles movie out. But I think Jason is the one right now for us that we’d love to get our hands on.”
That being said, the studio’s also involved in the upcoming horror prequel The First Purge, which arrives in cinemas July 4th. But for anyone anxious for a return to the gruesome action of the Friday the 13th movies, you might have to settle in for a long wait.