Those familiar with the entirety of the Friday The 13th series as it currently exists will recognize that there is quite a bit of sameness that persists in all of the sequels. While the location occasionally changes (with Jason Takes Manhattan mostly taking place on a boat, and Jason X taking the action into outer space), the movies are mostly scenes consisting of scared teenagers being pursued by a machete-wielding killer in a hockey mask.
All that being said, f the franchise wants to move into the future (and, ironically, a 13th installment has been stalled in development hell for years), it's going to need to evolve to at least some degree. The key will be finding the right storyteller to provide a pitch – and for what it's worth, one of the greatest horror storytellers of all time has an idea that he's been kicking around for a while.
Seemingly apropos of nothing, Stephen King took to Twitter this past weekend and announced to the world that he believes one of the best books he's never actually written would be set in the world of Friday The 13th and tell a story from the perspective of Jason Voorhees instead of some random forgettable teen:
Based on this Tweet, it appears that the idea is that the film would track the activities of Jason Voorhees not just over the course of one murderous rampage at Camp Crystal Lake, but instead over the course of several. Eternally craving revenge for the horrible treatment he received when he was a child, he gets resurrected; kills a bunch of surrogates for his tormentors; gets killed himself by the strongest/luckiest of the would-be victims; and then goes to hell and waits to be resurrected again. It's a Sisyphean existence, and it's not hard to see why it appeals to King.
Fans will be quick to point out the use of "probably" in that first Tweet, suggesting that Stephen King doesn't necessarily think that the door is totally closed on the idea – but he also has good reason to believe that it would be a challenge. Specifically, one can't just decide to write a book about a pre-existing character without negotiating for the rights, and that's a whole mess that the author/screenwriter/director doesn't seem to keen to dive into, regardless of how enticing he sees his Friday The 13th take:
Before concluding his thoughts on the subject, Stephen King did have one more thought to add to the conversation. Being one who has been working within the film world for decades now, and follows the industry closely, he offered up a suggestion for where he might like to see the concept be executed as a film:
It's logical. After all, it was just a couple years ago that Blumhouse managed to successfully relaunch the Halloween franchise, producing the first quality sequel in the series since 1982, and earlier this year they helped preserve the legacy of the Universal Classic monsters with Leigh Whannell's The Invisible Man. They've been doing a lot of good in the horror genre in recent years, and the idea of them helping to make a Friday The 13th film sprung from the mind of Stephen King is over-the-top tantalizing.
Whether or not any part of the vision above will ever come to fruition is a total mystery for now – but hopefully those calling the shots for the future of the Friday The 13th franchise are paying attention.
