Stephen King Has a Great Idea for a ‘Friday the 13th’ Jason Voorhees Book!
Stephen King is a lucrative horror franchise himself. Most of his novels have become movies, some of them more than once like Pet Sematary and Carrie. King creates his own monsters, so he usually stays away from other people’s franchises. That’s why it’s so surprising to see him tweet an idea for a book about Jason Voorhees, the hockey masked murderer from the Friday the 13th franchise.
[Spoiler alert: This story includes spoilers for the Friday the 13th films.]
There have been 12 films featuring Jason Voorhees so far. Here’s King’s take on the franchise which would be quite a different twist on Friday the 13th.
Stephen King’s idea for a ‘Friday the 13th’ Jason Voorhees book
King is so prolific, and those are only the books he finishes. Imagine how many more he starts and puts in a drawer. Here is his idea for I Jason.
And there’s more. Read on to find out why he sees the dramatic potential in Jason’s own story, and what stops him from writing this.
Jason Voorhees in the ‘Friday the 13th’ saga
To understand what King is proposing, consider the 12 film saga. In Friday the 13th, Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) murders camp counselors to avenge her son Jason. Jason was a special needs camper who drowned in Crystal Lake when counselors neglected him to hook up. The surprise ending was Jason coming out of Crystal Lake at the end of the film.
For 10 more sequels and a remake, Jason became the killer of Camp Crystal lake, avenging himself. It seemed like every summer, someone thought it was safe to reopen the camp, and a new crop of counselors had sex and Jason killed them. A final girl would defeat him each time, or a boy in the case 4 and 6.
Jason never stayed dead though. He was reanimated by lightning in Jason Lives and anchored to the depths of Crystal lake at the end. A New Blood resurrected him but returned him to the lake when she was done. Then a boat dislodged him in Jason Takes Manhattan, ending with toxic waste reverting Jason to his childhood form in the end.
Freddy vs. Jason sort of ended in a tie, with Jason emerging from the lake with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund)’s head. Freddy doesn’t need a body to survive though and his wink assured fans he was still very much alive. So King is referring to Jason’s Groundhog Day like existence, where he wakes up, kills a group of counselors, and returns to the lake every year as it were.
Why Stephen King won’t write ‘I Jason’
King is an industry professional so he knows all the hurdles a pre-existing property like Friday the 13th involves. Paramount made the first eight films, then sold it to New Line Cinema which Warner Bros. owns. Legal limbo holds up a 13th Friday the 13th, though WB traded the rights back to Paramount for a few years in return for some of their titles.
“Just thinking about the legal thicket one would have to go through to get permissions makes my head ache,” King wrote.” And my heart, that too. But gosh, shouldn’t someone tell Jason’s side of the story?”
Of course, King has empathy for Jason. He even foresees his hypothetical novel turning into a hypothetical movie. “Blumhouse could do it as a movie,” he wrote, referring to the horror studio that made The Invisible Man, Get Out, Us, The Hunt, the 2018 Halloween remake and upcoming Halloween Kills and Halloween Ends.
