Damian Shannon and Mark Swift were the writers who cracked the Freddy vs. Jason story and pulled that project out of development hell, where it had been trapped for a decade. Six years later, when Warner Bros. teamed up with Paramount and Platinum Dunes for a Friday the 13th reboot, Shannon and Swift were again the writers. (You can hear all about that Friday the 13th in our latest WTF Happened video.) Since the reboot made over $91 million at the global box office on a budget of $19 million when it was released in February of 2009, it was no surprise when it was announced that it was going to receive a sequel, to be shot in 3-D and released on August 13, 2010. Then the studios couldn’t agree on the money split, so the sequel was shelved… but not before Shannon and Swift had already written the full script. Today, to celebrate Friday the 13th, they have shared a death scene from that unmade sequel. A scene involving a young woman taking a ride on a zip line – then being met at the bottom by a machete-wielding Jason Voorhees.
Here’s the death scene:
As mentioned in that post, the opening sequence of the unmade sequel script was set during the winter. Six years ago, Shannon and Swift also shared an excerpt from that sequence:
According to the title page, the sequel would have been titled Friday the 13th: Camp Blood, which would be a great title for an installment in the franchise. Then there’s a surprising second subtitle: The Death of Jason Voorhees.
Directed by Marcus Nispel, Friday the 13th (2009) has the following synopsis: Against the advice of locals and police, Clay scours the eerie woods surrounding Crystal Lake for his missing sister. But the rotting cabins of an abandoned summer camp are not the only things he finds. Hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees lies in wait for a chance to use his razor-sharp machete on Clay and the group of college students who have come to the forest to party.
The film stars Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle, Aaron Yoo, Jonathan Sadowski, Julianna Guill, Ben Feldman, Arlen Escarpeta, Ryan Hansen, Willa Ford, Nick Mennell, America Olivo, Kyle Davis, Richard Burgi, Caleb Guss, and Nana Visitor, with Derek Mears as Jason Voorhees. Mears was expected to reprise the role of Jason in the sequel.
I was really disappointed when the Friday the 13th (2009) sequel didn’t happen, which paved the way for several more disappointments regarding the franchise over the last decade plus. So it’s nice to see that Shannon and Swift are able to share pieces of the scripts here and there.
What did you think of the death scene from the unmade sequel? Do you wish this movie had been made? Let us know by leaving a comment below.