For all that Jason Voorhees is a scary movie icon who strikes fear (and machetes) in the hearts of his victims, Friday the 13th’s lawsuits and legal troubles over the years have been as much a horror as anything else about the franchise. Thankfully, TV fans will be taking a trip to Crystal Lake with Bryan Fuller and Peacock, and now Jason Blum is back in the conversation, and he has one of the best ideas possible for which director should spearhead the next big screen feature if his production company ever lands the rights.
Seeing as how Friday the 13th is one of the best horror movies of all-time, the next effort should have someone equally noteworthy behind the camera. Speaking with Collider about his ongoing hopes for Blumhouse Productions to acquire rights to the slasher classic, he suggested one of the genre’s current hitmakers would be perfect for it. In Blum’s words:
Friday the 13th is what I would do. It's not a Blumhouse project, but I'm trying to will it into being one. It's just a piece of IP I've always loved. And James Wan and Atomic Monster are very passionate about it, and I think we would have them shepherd it for us. That would be a lot of fun.
Oh man, oh man, oh man. The idea of having James Wan in the driver’s seat for a Friday the 13th movie seems like a legitimate match made in viscera-soaked heaven. And one doesn’t even need to be a super-fan of either Wan’s entire filmography or all of the Friday sequels to grasp how sweet this could be.
One of the biggest issues in the world of horror, whether it’s reboots or wholly original projects, is that projects rarely get sizable budgets, and much of the money that does get spent goes to securing rights and marketing, with the cast and special effects also taking a chunk of the dough. And when all of that comes into play, there’s rarely enough left over to land top-notch filmmakers to get behind the camera, with plenty of promising horror movies being helmed by first- or second-time directors that don’t necessarily have a “vision” yet.
But James Wan rather quickly established himself as someone with the skills to bring a variety of genre tales to life, from Saw’s slasher vibes to Insidious and The Conjuring’s supernatural scares to Malignant’s slow-burn approach. And his work with the Aquaman films and Fast X proved he can still deliver even when the budgets are huge.
Blumhouse is in the process of promoting Jeff Wadlow’s upcoming horror movie Imaginary, and is still riding the waves of success of Five Nights at Freddy’s (and Night Swim more recently, to a lesser extent). Meanwhile, James Wan is coming off of the highly erratic production and release of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which fizzled at the box office in light of James Gunn and Peter Sarafan’s rebooted DCU. But that was outside of his impact, so it likely won't dissuade fans from watching everything else he does in the future. And if that "everything" includes resurrecting Jason Voorhees in theaters, he'll earn every Camp Crystal Lake badge possible.
Though nothing is actually moving forward with a new Friday the 13th movie just yet, it's only a matter of time before it happens. Until then, remember to hug your mother.
