The Friday the 13th franchise has officially dodged the found-footage bullet. With Jason Voorhees' years-in-the-making return to the big screen finally nearing production, producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller are speaking out to ease fans' worries that the reboot would eventually cave to the studio's suggestion of going full Blair Witch. The consensus? Not gonna happen.
"There were so many obstacles to surmount to get to where we are today," Fuller toldCollider Tuesday. "I'm not going to bore you with all of them but for a long time, there was a rights issue between Paramount and Warner Bros. 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."
After apparently outvoting the studio's found-footage wishes, the film is now in the process of, you know, actually happening. "I'm here to say that we found the location," Form said. "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."
The last time we stared at Voorhees' hockey mask, we actually kinda just wanted to laugh at him since the movie itself (2009’s vaguely named Friday the 13th) was a certified letdown that somehow managed to go on for 97 minutes. The new take on the franchise, which Fuller and Form are now calling a "hard R" period piece, aims to make the "mileage" of the franchise less overwhelming for newcomers.
"Aaron Guzikowski's job, as challenging as it is, is to come up with a movie where if you haven't seen any of the other ones, you can still come and see this one and love it and not feel like you've missed out on anything," Fuller toldCollider. "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 fulfills both those mandates."
The untitled Friday the 13th reboot is due Oct. 13, 2017.
