The new ‘Friday the 13th’ movie will not be a found footage film but will be a gore fest with a hard R rating.
Iconic hockey mask wearing psychopath Jason Voorhees is being resurrected for a reboot which will now be released in October 2017 – 47 years after the franchise first began.
The movie was initially scheduled to come out early next year but was pushed back after the producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form told Paramount Pictures that Jason’s Camp Crystal Lake killing spree wouldn’t work as a found footage film – a staple of the horror genre now – because viewers need to experience the story from Jason’s perspective stalking his victims.
In an interview with Collider.com, Fuller – who co-produced the 2009 reboot with Form – said: "We always wanted to go back to Crystal Lake and make another one. There were so many obstacles to surmount to get to where we are today. I’m not going to bore you with all of them … Then there was an execution issue. At one point, the studio wanted us to make a found-footage version of that movie and that was deeply concerning to us because we didn’t think we could execute the movie in the right way if it was a found-footage movie."
Form added: "Jason is a POV movie. It was very hard to wrap our head around how you would do a ‘Friday the 13th’ that was found footage, knowing that we really need the Jason perspective of watching. We didn’t want to break the DNA of that. We also battled: do we do a sequel to the original? Do we pick up where we left off with Jared and Amanda at the end of the movie? Somehow, that didn’t find a home. So, it’s been eight years. It will be eight years since we made the last one. We have found the lake, we have found the camp. We found an amazing script by Aaron Guzikowski. Breck Eisner is directing the movie. That movie is shooting in early Spring."
Fuller – who also produced ‘The Purge’ series with Form – has also promised fans that there will be lots of references to the slasher franchise’s long history in the new movie because it is the thirteenth film to be made, whilst also being completely accessible to newcomers.
He explained: "Look, it’s the thirteenth ‘Friday the 13th’ movie. There’s been a lot of mileage between the first one and the thirteenth one. What we don’t want to do is alienate the audience who hasn’t seen the preceding 12 ‘Friday the 13th’ movies. Aaron Guzikowski’s job, as challenging as it is, is to come up with a movie where if you haven’t seen any go the other ones, you can still come and see this one and love it and not feel like you’ve missed out on anything. And if you have seen the other ones, we want this to feel fresh. That’s what took the longest amount of time: coming up with a story and then executing a script that fulfils both those mandates."
Next year promises to be a bumper time for Jason fans as a ‘Friday the 13th’ video game is being released which allows you to control the killer or one of the camp counsellors trying to escape his murderous clutches.