On a day to day basis I continue to search on the internet for the latest news of a potential sequel to the Friday the 13th remake. Unfortunately I have no news to report. I go to "Platinum Dunes-Official Site" to read the most recent news but find nothing. All I find is old news about the remake of Nightmare on Elm st dated back December of 2009. I continue on to my search to see if I can find anything on it using keywords like "Platinum Dunes upcoming films" or "latest news on Friday the 13th." I still find nothing. On Friday, after about twenty minutes or so from searching I saw an article that had the headline, "Platinum Dunes Continues to Move Away From Horror With Family Fantasy Film ‘The Hauntrepreneur.’" The whole article is basically about how Platinum Dunes wants to slowly break away from horror remakes and focus on more family oriented films like The Hauntrepeneur, a new TMNT (teenage mutant ninja turtles), Ouija, and heatseekers(action film). I have come to the conclusion that Platinum Dunes will not make a sequel for F13 anytime soon or ever. I feel like my childhood crush just broke my heart.
Don't get me wrong, the film industry is about entertaining everyone around the world while making money doing it. If Platinum Dunes wants to focus on more "family oriented" or "transformers" because they feel they can be successful in this area, by all means go for it. If I know Michael Bay like everyone else does, he is always looking for ways to make a quick buck compliments of Americans who spend their hard earn cash watching his movies. Mr. Bay, If this is your reason to be in the film industry than why don't you continue to make Friday the 13th movies? Like transformers, this could be your cash cow if you continue to make more films on the series.
Everyone can say what they want about the 2009 remake of Friday the 13th, but I enjoyed it tremendously. This movie made about $65,002,019. Most of the revenue came in the first week of it being released in theaters. This is the second largest grossing movie in the Friday Films. Right now, "Freddy Vs. Jason" currently holds the record for the most money made at the box office with an impressive $82,622,655 (Wikipedia). With that being said, Platinum Dunes, why did you decide to forget about Friday the 13th? Well I think I can come up with a few suggestions.
Before I go into my article I just need to state this isn't about bashing Michael Bay or about how mad I am because he forgot about the series. This is simply me stating a case why he needs to continue the series even if hardcore Friday Fans don't want him to. Michael Bay has made a good career in the movie industry. I do want to thank him for the remakes that he did, good or bad. He resurrected movies for me that I loved as a kid and I am grateful for that. Movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Nightmare on Elm St., Friday the 13th, Transformers, and upcoming films like teenage mutant ninja turtles and monster squad. I feel like that he is the savior of remakes. Michael Bay seems to be very passionate when it comes to his films. If you are a director and you make great films based on ideas you created than you need to stand up for your movies if you have other directors trying to use your ideas. Bay has done that time and time again. He is very outspoken when he feels that other directors might be copying his ideas. Here is an article that I found when he takes a shot at a director who he feels that copied his transformers movie in a scene. In this article that I found on firstshowing.net Michael Bay says "Okay it's time to turn up the heat on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. We've waited low in the weeds letting all the summer movies get their stuff out. We've seen the great year end movies, and watched the upcoming clips of the upcoming summer fare. We've seen certain movies coming out even trying to duplicate Transformer size robots in their ads. Please, come on." This is a good example on how the director is proud of his materpiece. Michael Bay may be outspoken when it comes to his films but how well does he handle pressure from the critics or fans?
Bay can make up any reasons in the world on why the Friday sequel won't get the green light. At the bottom of my heart I believe he doesn't want to make another one because of all the bad flax he received from the Friday fans and from critics on the film. Perhaps comments like this from Roger Ebert could of got under his skin; "Why does Jason continue his miserable existence, when his memoirs would command a seven-figure advance, easy? In the 1980 movie, 20 years had already passed since Jason first went to sleep with the fishes. Assuming he was a camper aged 12, he would have been 32 in 1980, and in 2009, he is 61. That helps explain why one of my fellow critics at the screening was wearing an AARP T-shirt." (robertebert.com). Roger Ebert can say all he wants, but he doesn't have any taste in movies. If he can hoot and rave on a movie about two cowboys riding each other besides their horses than we have an issue. If it's not the critics that get to Bay, perhaps it's the fans out there constantly blogging on there made up movie critic websites and trying to be a movie critic because they don't have anything else to do besides bitch and moan about how bad Michael Bay's movies are. For example, comments like this, "In the end it is really hard for me to like this movie. I mean it was hard for me to work up the nerve to just put aside my biases and sit through the movie and try to enjoy it, but when I don’t care about Jason in a Friday the 13th movie, something is seriously wrong. This Jason was not the Jason I grew up with and this was far from the Crystal Lake I dreamed of one day finding. There were moments were it seemed like I was getting cliff notes of the originals, a red barn here, a guy telling the Jason legend there, even an arrow scene right after finding the hockey mask (another poor excuse for creativity), plenty of examples of how sex only leads to death, but that wasn’t enough for me to want to forgive this movie for ever being made. Is it a good horror movie? It is decent. Is it a good retelling of my favorite series? Not even close" (horror-movies.ca). Ouch! Now that was brutal. Maybe it could be comments like this, "This movie stinks worse than mayonnaise in the hot sun...'This movie plays better as a sequel than it does a remake. If you haven't actually seen the originals the Jason legend is completely lost on you. They give a sketchy at best origin story but its a complete mess. They just wanted to skip past mommy dearest and get right into the merciless "Jason." Come on really? Jason has motives and they really didn't show any of that? He's just been living at the abandoned camp for 30 years in underground tunnels and for some reason just decides its a good time to start offing people left and right. I don't get it and apparently neither does platinum dunes"' (mrgabesreality.blogspot.com). I almost cried on that one! If you were Michael Bay and you heard these comments, what would you do?
If I were Michael Bay I would make another Friday sequel. I would approach with optimism, due to the fact I am getting pessimistic feedback. Other than getting advice from Christopher Nolan, I would make sure my sequel is better than the first film. It would be so good that all the hardcore Friday the 13th fans would piss their pants. I would make a few changes. I would go back to basics. I wouldn't use the CGI blood I would stick with the fake blood like the old school horror movies did. I would hire screenwriters who worked on the previous Friday films (preferably part 1 through part 4). I would hire the make up artists like Tom Savini. Most importantly I would have some of the directors from the old Friday films like Sean Cunningham, Steve Miner, or Joseph Zito mentor me how to make this a successful Friday film. I wouldn't have actors like Aaron Yoo or Travis Van Winkle in all of my movies (I have nothing against them. Both are good actors). I would use the best of the best "scream queens" for my film and not just some eye candy to get more ticket sales at the box office. Believe it or not, sex doesn't always sell. Finally, I wouldn't have a big budget to spend on my film. I am a firm believer that horror movies are successful with a small budget. Most of the horror movies we know and love that were successful had small budgets. I believe with a big budget you will spend too much money on CGI and other special effects for show that wouldn't be necessary for the movie (I believe this is why fans gave the remake a horrible review). If you want to make a great horror movie, you need "interesting characters", "create suspense", "don't take the movie too seriously," (examiner.com) and passion for the genre. Great horror directors like John Carpenter, Wes Craven, and Sam Raimi will tell you this.
Successful horror movies means big bucks. When you make big bucks than you start to focus on the corporate aspect of the industry and what is most important to your shareholders. Your love for the genre eventually disappears, you don't listen to the common horror fan anymore than your films become mediocre. I believe this is what happened to Michael Bay. Platinum Dunes is a big production company that can remake classic horror movies and make them mediocre. However they have the money to manipulate the "movie fan" by promoting, advertising, adding stylish special effects to their films to get box office results. This is not the best way to approach a horror movie, but they have success in it. If they continue to do this than they need to continue the Friday the 13th series. It's not transformers, but $382,746,073 box office revenue off of a twelve film series is a nice chunk of cash. The Friday films have made more money than Nightmare on Elm St($370,491,197), Halloween (Including Rob Zombie's films $308,522,645), Texas Chainsaw Massacre($164,925,750), Child's play ($126,174,126) and Hellraiser series ($48,526,609)(Wikipedia).
If Michael Bay doesn't want to continue to create the series than Warner Brother's studio, Paramount Picture or Newline (whoever owns the rights to F13) should definitely check into a director who has a passion for the horror genre like Adam Green. With his success in the Hatchet Series, he will make a kick ass Friday the 13th film and laugh all the way to the bank.