What He Said: David Bruckner Reveals His Scrapped Plans for a Dazed & Confused-Inspired Friday the 13th Reboot

What He (or She) Said is a new feature on the site where I give quick context to explain an interesting quote from elsewhere on the internet.

The Context: Paramount has a Friday the 13th film in development which it keeps pushing back, putting its most recent release date in 2017, and the CW is presumably still developing its odd-sounding Friday the 13th TV series. However, at one point there was going to be a direct sequel to 2009’s reboot starring Jared Padalecki, and when that fell apart there was going to be another reboot from director David Bruckner (V/H/S) and writer Nick Antosca (TV’s Hannibal) due out Friday, May 13, 2016. That release date was pushed back late last year, and Bruckner and Antosca both moved on. Now, Prisoners screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski is attached to whatever version of Friday the 13th Paramount is developing.

In a recent interview with Hitfix, Bruckner revealed what his and Antosca’s take on the material was going to be, and while it doesn’t go into super specific detail it does reveal that their priority was to make us care about the characters, likely following the same impulse as the filmmakers behind Cabin in the Woods and The Final Girls. As far as Friday the 13th movies go, that would have qualified as a novel concept.

The Quote:

It was a proper reboot. The final version that we were working on was with a writer Nick Antosca, who writes for ‘Hannibal,’ or did, rather. It was a proper ‘end of the summer’ summer camp movie that took place in the late ‘80s…I like to say that ‘Dazed and the Confused’…was a huge inspiration to me in how we approached the character relationships, just because that’s a movie that captures a kind of a timeless — even though it takes place in the ‘70s — a very timeless, nostalgic experience. And it’s very much — you chart several characters at once, it’s very much an ensemble piece, and you really are able to get at this coming of age vibe. I just wanted to see a movie where you’re that invested in everybody and [then] Jason Voorhees [shows up].

Source: Hitfix (via io9)