Why Friday the 13th Hasn’t Had Another Movie in 15 Years: What’s Going On?

The Friday the 13th franchise is among the most iconic in horror, and its central killer Jason Voorhees is among the slasher elite, which makes his 15-year absence from the big screen all the more perplexing. The long-running movie series centers around Jason Voorhees, a seemingly unkillable monster whose overarching story has been rebooted or rerouted away from Camp Crystal Lake many times. While other storied horror movie franchises like Halloween, AlienAnd scream have continued to march on with new chapters and iterations every few years, the Friday the 13th Franchise remained completely dormant.

To be sure, no Friday the 13th Movie has always been a bastion of cinematic quality, and the box office gross has never been anything to write home about. However, in the age of streaming, it’s unusual for something that is undoubtedly the nostalgic weight of an iconic franchise to go completely unexplored for more than 15 years. There’s actually not one reason why Jason Voorhees hasn’t picked up his machete in over a decade – there are several.

It is now 15 years since Friday the 13th movie was released

The most recent was the 2009 reboot attempt

The last attempt to bring Jason Voorhees back from the dead came in 2009, 15 years ago. Friday the 13th (2009) was set to act as a reboot for the franchiseAnd completely reset the timeline and continuity. The plot stayed relatively close to the first bit Friday the 13th movies, with Jason acting as a sympathetic figure despite brutally murdering almost everyone he encounters. The movie actually became a box office hit, as it was earning over $92 million on a budget of just $19 million.

However, it suffered from the same issues as almost all of its predecessors. Because it effectively just rehashes the first few movies of the franchise, It brought almost nothing to the table. Jason may have been a little more on the lean side versus the hulking brute that he evolved into earlier in the franchise, but the mask was literally made from a mold of the franchise. Friday the 13th Part III Mask. The film was a critical flop, and despite the fact that it received the second-highest total of the franchise, it did almost nothing to inspire any studio to continue the story in earnest.

Why there haven’t been any new Friday the 13th movies

The answer lies in multiple failures to launch and a process

Although it was originally intended to be a follow-up to the 2009 reboot, trying economic times pushed it to the backburner for Warner Bros. Pictures, and eventually it faded out of existence. The franchise rights passed to Paramount Pictures in 2013And a new installment was set in motion almost immediately, this time as a found-footage movie. After more delays and directors/writers tagging in and out of the project, the movie, which evolved into a reboot, was finally shelved in 2017, and duly passed back to Warner Bros. and New Line in 2018.

in this time frame, The writer of the original Friday the 13thVictor Miller, sued for rights to the screenplaywho existed with the company he originally worked for when he wrote the screenplay. Multiple years of legal back-and-forth further hindered none Friday the 13th projects from being made, with Miller finally winning the rights in September 2021. During that time, a number of sequels and prequels were worked on, with titles including Jason never dies, Friday the 13th: The BeginningAnd Diary of Pamela VoorheesBut ultimately nothing has ever gotten off the ground.

Will there be more Friday the 13th projects?

A TV series is already underway

Despite years of disappointments, the future for Friday the 13th is bright thanks to one potential project in particular. A Friday the 13th Prequel show titled Crystal Lake It premiered in 2022 before it seems all but dead and buried in early 2024. However, the show is now back on track, and with the support of the low-budget production studio A24 behind it, the show is extremely promising. Crystal Lake is now led by Brad Caleb Kane, who is also behind the it Prequel show IT: Welcome to DerryAnd is planned to air on Peacock.

Jason Voorhees may also find his way back to the big screen in the near future. Sean S. Cunningham, director and producer of the original Friday the 13thAlong with writer Jeff Locker and producer Jeremy Weiss, has already pitched a reboot for the franchise. However, Cunningham made it clear that there won’t be another one Friday the 13th At least another three years, so the earliest that Jason could make his big return would be 2027.