Having hacked and slashed his way to a $70 million worldwide payday, it seems as though Jason Voorhees has made a bigger comeback than Mickey Rourke.
Now as we all know, in the world of Hollywood horror movies, a strong box office take is almost always a go-sign for a string of increasingly terrible sequels (cough, Saw, cough). Friday The 13th, it seems, is no exception (even though it suffered a brutal 80% drop on its second weekend).
Or is it?
According to early reports, Platinum Dunes and New Line’s next installment of Friday the 13th will be a “follow up,” rather than a “sequel.” Jason Voorhees will still be the bad guy holding the machete, but Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the guys who wrote the script for the “reboot” and will handle the script for the “follow-up,” are trying to steer clear of the campy antics that plagued the latter installments of the original series.
[SIDEBAR: Am I the only one who is getting tired of Hollywood's bottomless buzz-word dictionary? "Follow-ups," "reboots," "relaunches," "re-imaginings..." Just pick a damn phrase and stick with it!]
So does ignoring the established canon mean that Jason won’t be re-taking Manhattan, going back to hell or back into space? Probably. So does that mean the filmmakers will have to come up with (gasp) a brand new storyline?
I’ll believe it if and when I see it. And not one second before.
On the business side, as of now it’s looking like Friday The 13th (reboot) director Marcus Nispel won’t be helming the follow-up. Also up in the air are the fates of stars Jared Padalecki and Amanda Righetti, whose characters were the only ones to survive Jason’s rampage. Padalecki is still committed to his starring role on Supernatural, while Righetti has found success on The Mentalist this year. Roping the two young stars into doing another slasher flick could be a hard sell.
Right now Platinum Dunes and New Line are focusing on their Nightmare On Elm Street reboot (if that’s the word for it), which is set to begin shooting in a few weeks. But don’t expect Jason to be gone too long: the studios are looking to have the next Friday The 13th in theaters as soon as 2010.
How do you feel about a Friday The 13th sequel “follow-up?” Are you ready for more Voorhees mayhem, or was the reboot already more than you wanted to see?
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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