'Friday the 13th' Producers Basically Want To Make 'The Force Awakens' Of J…

The 2009 Friday the 13th is a terrific horror movie on its own and also a smart reboot that knows how to quickly give old fans what they want while also opening new fans to the fold. There’s really only one major problem with the movie: it failed to actually reboot the franchise.

Don’t ask us why it failed, because we certainly don’t know the answer. It seemed to do well enough at the box office ($91 million world wide) and on home video, where even more people discovered it, and yet we never got a sequel. Worse yet, Platinum Dunes, the main studio behind it, has announced several attempts at rebooting the franchise all over again, but even those attempts have failed to materialize. But now they’ve got a new plan, and it’s one that seems to be taking a note from an unlikely source: Star Wars.

Say what you will about J.J. Abrams’ movie, but for most people The Force Awakens hit that sweet spot formula of being beholden to franchise nostalgia while also adding just enough new flavors to feel truly exciting again. And that’s basically what producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form want to do with everyone’s favorite slasher in a hockey mask. Here’s how they pitched the new movie to Variety:

“The challenges are you don’t want to alienate the people that come to see the first 12 but at the same time you don’t want your audience who haven’t seen the first 12 to feel like I’ve missed out on all of this and I’m not coming to see the 13th film. That’s where and why we were lucky enough to get Aaron Guzikowski, who is an amazing writer and who saw a way to bridge those two audiences and make a way a movie where if you haven’t seen a Friday the 13th movie you know exactly what is going on and if you have seen one, you are going to be smiling the whole way through because there are nods to everything that you know but it is not imperative that you know those things to enjoy the film. “

That’s all well and good, but is a bit frustrating since walking the line between remake and reboot is already something the 2009 Friday the 13th did quite well. But, alas, we have to give up on writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift and director Marcus Nispel coming back again to the 2009 timeline. This time Fuller and Form have hired Prisoners screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski to write this screenplay. They haven’t told us what it’s actually about this time, but it’s safe to say a guy named Jason is going to terrorize some poor co-eds out in the middle of nowhere.

The new, currently untitled Friday the 13th is currently set to hit theaters on October 13, 2017.

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