The legal troubles of the Friday the 13th franchise have been dragging on for a long time, and we’re hoping that recent developments in the copyright battle over the series can be resolved this year. In the meantime, we’ve had various attempts at resurrecting Jason in different forms, including a video game and a long in-development television series. And now, we have some behind-the-scenes images of some of the different props planned for the show, courtesy of FridayThe13thFranchise.com.
Producer Sean S. Cunningham was behind a proposed television spinoff, announced in 2014 in the same period where Paramount were attempting to get a new Friday the 13th series off the ground. Of course, there’d previously been an anthology-type Friday the 13th series in the 1980s, although this had only a loose connection to the movies. The new concept would apparently have involved Jason showing up in different time periods, and The CW were reportedly interested in taking on the project. Cunningham was still kicking around the series in 2017, but it now seems to be dead in the water.
However, it appears that pre-production was far enough along for SOTA FX to have been commissioned to produce props for both the show and a planned extension of the movie franchise. The props, seen above, include different mask concepts and a machete, as well as Jason’s hockey mask, and are notable for showing a Jason with various types of deformities, indicating that the producers weren’t settled on the final look for the killer.
It’s a shame, then, that these designs couldn’t be used for at least one of the failed Friday the 13th projects. Here’s hoping that a new take on Jason can be pushed through to join the raft of other horror remakes being planned for the 2020s though, including a new take on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the return of A Nightmare on Elm Street and a reboot of The Hills Have Eyes series.
