Sean S. Cunningham discusses the development of the next Friday the 13th

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

It's very disconcerting that the development of the next installment in the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise is taking so long. In the 1980s, Paramount Pictures were pumping FRIDAY movies out on a yearly basis and they were awesome. Jason Voorhees went over to New Line Cinema/Warner Bros. after the '80s, but Paramount got back in on the Voorhees action when they teamed up with WB for the 2009 FRIDAY THE 13TH. In 2013, Warner Bros. handed the rights back to Paramount for a five year period. The Paramount of the '80s would have knocked out at least four movies during this window of opportunity, but instead the development of the next FRIDAY THE 13TH has been a two year slog. The movie was announced for 2015, then pushed back to 2016, then 2017, the rights getting closer and closer to slipping back out of Paramount's hands.

In a talk with Fangoria, original FRIDAY THE 13TH director Sean S. Cunningham, who re-joined the series as producer as of 1993's JASON GOES TO HELL: THE FINAL FRIDAY, discussed the development process:

FANGORIA: There have been rumors going around that the new FRIDAY THE 13TH film will take place during the winter as well as other ideas, can you comment on that?

CUNNINGHAM: They’ve been talking about that, but that’s not going to happen. I think what’s different for sure is Paramount was hung up on trying to do the found footage, which most fans, including me, just thought it wasn’t right. They weren’t saying yes to anything that didn’t work but they couldn’t find anything that would work. So finally, last February they gave up on it and decided to go in a completely different way and now they’re in the process of once again finding a better way to make it.

They need to break out of the core audience and add to that audience to get crossover traffic.  I think the trick will be in taking Jason as he is and finding a way to involve him in slightly more complicated but purely primal stories, and that sounds kind of important but how do you do that? But I think if you can add that to what we already got then I think it really can sing.

I'm very glad that the wrongheaded found footage approach was finally abandoned after wasting so much time. Still, it seems like the filmmakers need to be reminded that there's no reason to overthink this stuff. What people want from FRIDAY THE 13TH is to see Jason Voorhees, in all his hockey masked glory, killing people in Crystal Lake. That simple. It shouldn't take years to crack this code.

Platinum Dunes is producing FRIDAY THE 13TH for Paramount with Cunningham. David Bruckner is attached to direct the film, which is currently set for release on Friday, January 13, 2017.

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