7 Friday The 13th Sequels That Almost Happened
1. Found-Footage Friday The 13th
An early version of the Breck Eisner reboot killed off long before the project died its final death sounds like it would have been the most unique Friday the 13th to date.
The studio's initial vision for the second Jason reboot in less than a decade was a found-footage horror film. Slasher mayhem almost met the Blair Witch Project, but producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form were against the idea.
They told Collider...
“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.”
This movie was based on the same treatment as the greenlit Eisner reboot, but make no mistake, it would have been an entirely different film, as surly as Paranormal Activity is a different entity to Insidious.
Found-footage horrors often run into their own set of creative issues, but this is exactly the kind of fresh thinking Friday the 13th needs to actually scare again and avoid going down in history as a one-trick pony.
The franchise has played around with tone to some extent in the past, usually going campier and more outlandish, but a sequel done on handheld cameras that celebrates indie filmmaking values would take Jason into a whole new sub-genre, something that would surely do him no harm.