Jason and Friday the 13th Are Coming Home to Paramount

Steve Barton   |  

Jun 5, 2013

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Good news today for Friday the 13th fans… Everyone’s favorite serial killing mama’s boy, Jason, is coming back to the original studio in which he and his mom first set up camp! Now if they can just promise to bring back Derek Mears as Jason and lose Platinum Dunes.

THR reports that as part of a deal which brought Warner Bros. in on Paramount’s new Christopher Nolan film, Interstellar, Warner Bros. had to hand over the rights to both Friday the 13th and “South Park.” Also part of the deal was an agreement to let Paramount co-finance a to-be-determined A-list Warner Bros. property.

The original Friday was made in 1980 by producer Sean Cunningham with investments from Boston theater owners. Paramount got domestic distribution rights; Warner Bros. had international. Eventually, the rights reverted back to Cunningham, who took them to New Line Cinema in the 1990s as part of an attempt to jumpstart a Freddy vs. Jason movie. That process took more than 10 years, and in the meantime, New Line made two other Friday the 13th movies.

When it came time for New Line, now part of Warner Bros., to develop a Friday remake/reboot, it was revealed that Paramount had certain rights to the original and had to be brought in as 50-50 partners. Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes ended up producing 2009’s Friday the 13th, which grossed a respectable $91 million for Paramount and Warner Bros. on a budget of less than $20 million.

Efforts to launch a sequel to the rebooted Friday as well as a second “South Park” movie were complicated due to both studios having a share in them. So Warner Bros. decided to sacrifice Jason and Cartman for a deal on Nolan’s Interstellar, thus maintaining its relationship with the filmmaker and snagging a piece of what could be another Inception.

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