The Friday the 13th franchise has been dormant for over a decade due to ongoing legal disputes about who owns which parts of the iconic horror IP. While it seemed that Jason Voorhees was set to live on thanks to the upcoming Peacock series Crystal Lake, original Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham is also continuing to develop his own new Jason reboot even though there is no guarantee that legalities won’t rear their head again.

According to Bloody Disgusting, the new Friday the 13th reboot is being written by screenwriter Jeff Locker, who is developing the project with Cunningham. According to Locker, the recent reveal that Bryan Fuller is moving ahead with Peacock’s Crystal Lake series has spurred him to believe that the right people may finally see the light and end the decade-long dispute of who owns the franchise. He said:

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“Sean hired me to do a rewrite on The Night Driver and after working closely with director Jeremy Weiss and him on that, we naturally got to talking about Friday the 13th and House. Jeremy and I pitched our dream reboot of Friday the 13th – with Sean’s blessing to keep developing it with him. Obviously, the prequel TV series has reignited interest about a new film so we’re hoping the surrounding excitement will inspire both sides to come together and give us Jason on the big screen again for the first time in 14 years, but we also have a Plan B for a sequel to the original we think fans will absolutely love and should avoid any legal entanglements.”

What Has Prevented Another Friday the 13th Reboot Being Made?

     Paramount Pictures

The legal wrangling over the Friday the 13th franchise, both its name and its central character of Jason Voorhees, has gone on for over a decade. The main issue with the franchise was instigated by the original movie’s writer Victor Miller, who launched and won a legal battle to reclaim the rights to his script. While he also won an appeal from Cunningham, the win is not as simple as it sounds, as the win only gives Miller the rights to the characters and story of his original script. This does not include the Friday the 13th name or the hockey-mask-wearing killer, who was only seen as a child in the first movie.

There is no way of knowing whether there will be objections to Cunningham’s latest attempt to wring money from the Friday the 13th franchise or what exactly his “Plan B” might entail if Miller attempts to block the movie. The way the current legal standings have been left, it is impossible for two different Jason-inspired projects to co-exist in the same timeline. This means that fans will potentially be soon seeing the drought of Friday the 13th content coming to an end with two different new adaptations of the franchise that can both develop their own versions of the Jason Voorhees mythology.