Rumour: New Friday The 13th Movie Going Back To The 1980s

New rumours suggest the next ‘Friday the 13th’ movie is going to return to the slasher franchise’s roots by being set in the 1980s.

There doesn’t seem to be much to substantiate this: the claim comes from Bloody Disgusting, who cite an interview with producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form at Brazilian site Omelete in which it is said an 80s-setting was announced. However, subsequent translations of this interview have failed to find any such statement.

Still, the interview does seem to confirm that this will be something of a standalone sequel, the producers declaring the new film “will not a continuation of the 2009 film nor a remake of the original. It’s just a different story.”

- Freddy Vs Jason Nintendo Game
- Amityville Delayed For Reshoots?
- Stephen King’s It Shooting Soon

It’s hard to fathom why the ‘Friday the 13th’ series has laid dormant so long. While the 2009 reboot from production house Platinum Dunes and director Marcus Nispel was a bit divisive among fans of the original series, it  performed handsomely enough for talk of a follow-up to arise almost immediately.

Yet in the five years since, not a great deal seems to have happened - until earlier in 2014, when David Bruckner (‘V/H/S,’ ‘The Signal’) was announced as being in talks to direct the next entry - which, funnily enough, will be the 13th film in the series (assuming we count 2003’s ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ crossover ‘Freddy Vs Jason’).

Since then, we’ve had a series of colourful rumours about the film, with early reports saying it’s intended to be a found footage film, and more recent claims that it will be in 3D - and even more alarmingly, rumours that the series figurehead, hockey-masked killer Jason Voorhees, might not even be in it.

And now we have this back-to-the-80s rumour. There’s a certain logic to the idea, and it’s easy to see why it appeals to existing ‘Friday the 13th’ fans: whilst the franchise has endured for well over thirty years, ‘Friday the 13th’ is heavily rooted in the 1980s, with the first eight films in the series being released between 1980 and 1989.

This approach would hardly be a first for Platinum Dunes either, as their first horror remake hit - 2003’s ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ (and its subsequent 2006 prequel ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning’) - kept the 1970s setting of the original rather than updating to present day.

Whether this approach means the next ‘Friday the 13th’ stays true to the spirit of the original films (which, in this writer’s opinion, the 2009 reboot failed to do) remains to be seen - assuming the 80s-time period rumours are indeed correct.

The next ‘Friday the 13th’ is scheduled to hit cinemas on 13 November 2015 - and yes, in case you needed to ask, that’s a Friday…

- Crow Reboot Gains Director, Loses Star?
- Paranormal Activity 5 Will Be 3D
- Stephen King’s The Stand: Four Films?

Picture Credit: Paramount Pictures