Just as production was set to begin on a new Friday the 13th reboot from director Breck Eisner (The Crazies), the brakes were hit. Not much has been said about the situation, until now.
Rights to the franchise are set to revert back to New Line sometime next year. But a lawsuit from the original film’s writer Victor Miller (interview) may cause problems for the studio.
ArrowInTheHead.com recently talked with Platinum Dunes producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller about the situation.
One of the biggest heartbreaks of the last couple years was that we were about to make that movie and it fell apart. That still hurts,” Fuller said. “The fans reach out to us; Andrew doesn’t really engage because he’s not on Twitter, but I am and I hear from the fans and that’s all they ask about. We get asked about that more than anything else.”
He continued. “Fans think it’s so simple, that if we want to make the movie we can go make it, and that’s just not the case. There are rights issues; originally, Warner Bros. owned the rights, then Paramount had them for a couple of years, and now I think the rights are reverting back to Warner Bros. At the same time, there’s this on-going lawsuit with Victor Miller. If there’s a lawsuit hanging over the rights, it’s problematic, you can’t really make the movie until that gets settled. And now the movie is at New Line, and we’ve made a lot of movies with those guys, but that’s not our home studio anymore.”
“So the question is, [does New Line] want to make the movie with us? If they want to make that movie with us, we will drop what we’re doing to make that movie. We had such a great experience making Friday the 13th, it was a dream come true to watch those movies as a kid and then be a part of it. So I don’t really have a clear answer.”
It seems that the ball is New Line’s court and that nothing can be done until the lawsuit is settled. But the real question is, do we really need a second reboot? I may be wrong, but I think fans would rather see a sequel.
