FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH producer already talking sequel, while prepping NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot!
by Steve MasonAfter I posted my original Early Estimates column on Big Hollywood last night, I received a Facebook message from Platinum Dunes partner and Friday the Thirteenth producer Rob Fuller saying “I hope you’re right.” My Friday estimate last night was for a robust $20M, and Variety is reporting $19.3M this morning. “We were hoping to do $10M-$11M yesterday,” he told me this morning. “In our wildest dreams we couldn’t have imagined that.”
I originally projected $51.25M for the 4-day weekend on Friday night, amd some analysts have the new Jason Voorhies saga sailing higher basec on early rerturns (I am now projecting $47M for 4 days). The combination of Valentine’s Day and a school holiday Monday for President’s Day make predicting the movie’s long weekend haul a tricky call, but regardless, this is great news for Warner Bros, which has the domestic distribution rights, Paramount, handling international distribution, and Platinum Dunes.
Platinum Dunes partners Brad Fuller and Andrew Form
Friday the Thirteenth director Marcus Nispel was always the first choice for this project. “We had success with him on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What this required was a great look, and he always delivers that. You can get a guy who makes it look pretty, but doesn’t make his days,” Fuller told me. “Marcus always delivers on time.”
I have characterized Friday the Thirteenth as a reboot, but Fuller isn’t entirely sure. “Legally, it’s a sequel. If you have to give it a name, it’s a sequel to the first movie,” but he quickly follows with “I don’t know what it is.” Probably F13 is best described as something between a reboot and a re-imagining.
This movie was never going to be a darling with critics (28% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes), but there are some positive notices.
“The series reboot is much the same, but it’s easily the most effective — and scary — entrant in the franchise.”
– Adam Graham, DETROIT NEWS
“Quibbles aside, Jason Voorhies has become almost a modern-day Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster – a figurehead of horror, despite some of his regrettable screen incarnations. It’s refreshing to see a movie take him seriously again.”
– Derek Donovan, KANSAS CITY STAR
“In addition to being awesome, it all just feels kind of celebratory, even reverent, like a tribute to what teen slasher films are all about.”
– Cammila Albertson, TV GUIDE’S MOVIE GUIDE
Harry Manfredini composed the score for the original FRIDAY THE 13TH, but wasn't invited to participate in the reboot
Some hardcore fans were upset that composer Harry Manfredini, who wrote the score for 1980’s original, was not invited to be part of this reboot. “Steve Jablonski has done the score for every one of our movies.” Fuller says. In the end, “we pulled out a lot of the score and went with ambient sound,” and, for my money, it amps up the tension perfectly.
Michael Bayer will direct the reboot of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but who will play Freddy?
Platinum Dunes, comprised of Michael Bay, Andrew Form and Fuller, will next tackle a reboot of Nightmare on Elm Street, and they have settled on Samuel Bayer as director, who will be making his feature debut. “He’s done a bunch of amazing commercials and videos, and we offered him a ton of jobs, “ says Fuller. The production company had a picture in development at Universal called Fiasco Heights with Bayer attached, but when Frank Miller’s The Spirit flopped at Christmas time, the project lost steam. They began looking for another project for Bayer and along came Freddy.
Fuller says that his company’s goal for Friday the Thirteenth has always been to surpass the $80M generated by its 2003 version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It should safely get to the $80M-$90M range in the US, and the producer tells me that he expects to start thinking about a sequel as soon as Tuesday.
Steve Mason is on Facebook and now also on Twitter.
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13 Comments
The only good thing about these sequel/remake/reboots is it is impossible to tarnish the integrity of the originals.
Untrue; A Nightmare on Elm Street is a great horror movie, aside from the atrocious studio-imposed stinger ending.
A genre lightly blemished by creativity has found its Clearasil in the form of reboots.
Only one real question here: Why must we endure remakes? (Wait–here's a second one!) Aren't there any new ideas in Hollywood??
My only question: Does Kevin Bacon get killed again?
Nope. LIke they said in 'LA Confidential'. "Nothing original. This is Hollywood."
Ken, true, I wll give you "Nightmare". "Halloween" and "Night of the Living Dead" didn't deserve what was done to them either.
While most of us won't appreciate these remakes, like everything, for the younger set, it is new to them. My son and daughter have seen the originals, but will end up seeing this one, and any of the others, too. I think at that age, they just like horror movies, they don't care who made them, what came before, etc.
the movie is great and jason is an icon son 3 generations.
i can see this movie easly surpass 90$.
A lot of the younger set (myself included) were much much too young to see the originals, and saw them later in life, thinking that they were really corny. Without the nostalgia to reinforce the image of the movie, they just don't stand up to our visual standards. The remakes, however, are how we'll forever imagine Leatherface, Jason, Michael Meyers, and soon Freddy.
It's the remakes that's the problem with catering to the youth of today. We can't accept the original movies for what they were/are. We need to make them "kewl" or kids won't accept them. The Hollywood face lift and reboot are part of the culture. Why waste time creating when rebooting pays the same or better. I swear they feel that its better to have the movies look shiny and new, otherwise kids won't download them for free. How can you have classics with all the remakes?
Hollywood the Bland, I cry for thee.
The good thing about F13 is that all it ever really had was Jason. He and Freddy and Michael and Leatherface have very much become the 80s equivilent to the Universal Monsters (which, I might add, were also sequelized to death). But unlike Freddy and Michael and Leatherface, Jason never had a single good movie to his name (though lots of creative kills and awesome boobage). If any of them "deserved" to be revisited and relaunched, it was Jason. And while this film doesn't quite hit the highs of TCM, Halloween, or Nightmare 1, it is leaps and bounds better than its predecessors. It's a start.
Just a point: There is nothing new to sequels. There's a reason why Hercules had his labors. Popular characters will get revisited again and again, and I don't see why they shouldn't. How many people complained about the innumerable Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan stories? How many Oz books were there? As for remakes, once a story becomes a legend, everyone wants to tell their version. How many different interpretations of myths and legends are out there? How many retellings of Robin Hood, or Frankenstein, or Hamlet? Good lord, the New Testament tells the Jesus story four times (and its been told on film even more). There is simply nothing new to any of this, and if it were in a different format, few would care. But for some reason, when it comes to film, revisiting a character or story is somehow bad, cheap, or uninspired. So keep your nose in the air if you must, but I'll be first in line to see Pride and Predators.
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