Hopes are high that the 13th installment of the popular slasher franchise will make it
to the big screen sooner rather than later.
Until then, let's take a look back at all the Jason Voorhees stories that never came
to life.
These are the Friday the 13th projects you'll never get to see.
A crossover between A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th was first pitched in 1987.
And while it took 16 years for Freddy vs. Jason to become a reality, loads of scripts
were written to support a slew of potential mashup ideas.
According to Bloody Disgusting, a potential script called Nightmare 13: Freddy Meets Jason
wrapped Jason Voorhees' origin story right into Freddy's, suggesting Freddy Krueger was
the Camp Crystal Lake counselor who drowned Jason Voorhees.
This angle gave Jason an intriguing motive for becoming a killer and wanting to battle
Freddy.
The script was reportedly rewritten to include a battle scene between Freddy and Jason that
took place in a boxing ring in hell.
An actor would portray Ted Bundy as the ring announcer.
And guess who was supposed to sit right in the front row?
Adolf Hitler.
Perhaps it's for the best that we never got to see this one.
New Line Cinema pitched their own Freddy vs. Jason idea in 1997, and the O.J. Simpson trial
inspired their version of the story.
According to Flickering Myth, the script took a similar approach to Wes Craven's New Nightmare,
adding a meta layer that explored Jason going on trial for his many murders.
"Are you trying to justify to me the fact that you're an idiot?"
Freddy Krueger eventually enters the action and attempts to use Jason to get out of dreamland
and into the real world.
Well, it certainly would've been interesting to watch Jason take the stand, much like Freddy
did in an episode of Freddy's Nightmares called "No More Mr. Nice Guy," directed by Tobe Hooper.
"Come on!
I'd rather burn up than fade away!
I'll be back…
I'm free… free!"
After the success of Platinum Dunes' Friday the 13th reboot in 2009, Paramount and Warner
Brothers started working on a follow-up with the studio.
"Uh, are you looking for this?
'Cuz it, uh, it completes your outfit."
Bloody Disgusting reports a sequel called Friday the 13th: Camp Blood was written in
2010 by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the same guys who wrote the Freddy vs. Jason script.
According to multiple rumors, Derek Mears was going to play Jason again, the film would
be shot in 3D, and the plan was to release the film opposite Platinum Dunes' other genre
reboot: 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street.
"I'm your boyfriend now."
Producer Brad Fuller ultimately announced the cancellation of the project on Twitter
in 2010, writing:
"It's not my call: I would drop everything and make it today if they wanted it."
Seven years later, a never-before-seen image was revealed on Shannon and Swift's Twitter
feed: The title page of their never-filmed script.
Looks like they were was planning to kill off Jason once and for all.
Yeah, right.
"We weren't doing anything.
We were just messing— "
In 2013, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar managed to reignite Friday the 13th hopes.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Brothers gave its rights to the franchise
over to Paramount to have a stake in the science fiction epic.
David Bruckner, the director of the "Amateur Night" installment of the 2012 horror anthology
film VHS, was brought on to direct.
Nick Antosca, the screenwriter behind the Hannibal film adaptation, signed on to write
the script.
What they came up with sounds like it would have been a lot of fun.
It would take place in the '80s.
Jason's mom would have a role in the film, and it would allegedly focus on Jason's supernatural
mythology.
Bruckner told Fangoria he wanted to make a cross between slasher horror and slacker comedy:
"My take on it was that I wanted to do Dazed and Confused meets Jason Voorhees, a genuine
last-day-of-school coming-of-age story."
Unfortunately, due to the poor box office returns of the horror sequel Rings, Paramount
wound up slashing Friday the 13th right off its lineup.
Would the story of Jason Voorhees work on television?
The CW's Mark Pedowitz clearly thought the answer was "yes."
In 2015, the network announced they had a Friday the 13th TV series in the works.
Series creator Steven Long Mitchell described the tone as, quote, "a cross between the first
season of True Detective and Twin Peaks on acid."
That's an odd analogy, considering those shows seem like they're on acid already.
According to Mitchell, the story would have followed a police detective looking for his
lost brother in Crystal Lake.
The central mystery would revolve around whether Jason was killing again or a copycat was on
the loose.
Sadly, the CW ended up passing on the series.
Pedowitz told Collider:
"We didn't believe it was a sustainable script or a sustainable series.
It was a very good pilot, but not a sustainable series."