The Big Picture

Jason Never Dies, the unmade seventh film in the Friday the 13th franchise, continues to haunt fans’ dreams, with its title suggesting it would have carried the same swagger as Jason Lives. Despite the success of Jason Lives, director Tom McLoughlin decided to step away from the franchise, leaving subsequent sequels to go downhill, with the 2009 reboot as the last installment. McLoughlin is still planning on making Jason Never Dies, which would wipe away everything since Jason Lives and take place in 1999, following a group of Catholic school girls as the new victims at Camp Crystal Lake.

The Friday the 13th franchise has had a ridiculous number of sequels over the years, with some being better than others, but the number of sequels that have failed to get past production is even greater. Enter Jason Never Dies, the unmade seventh film in the franchise that continues to haunt fans’ dreams to this day. The film would have been made by director Tom McLoughlin, the same twisted mind behind Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Given that film’s reputation as one of the franchise’s strongest entries, Jason Never Dies was set up to be a major success. But what happened to this unseen seventh movie, and what does McLoughlin think about it now?

By the time Jason Lives had come out, the Friday the 13th franchise had gone through just about every idea possible. The first five films range from generic slasher nonsense to some of the best movies in the subgenre, with loads of the credit going to director Steve Miner. That being said, Tom McLoughlin is the one who should be credited as the savior of this series. McLoughlin came in and breathed new life into Jason Voorhees (well, he actually used a bolt of lightning to revive him), gave these movies a new gothic look, called back to classic horror pictures, made its titular villain more menacing than ever (played better than ever by C.J. Graham), and even gave it a darkly comic bite that it never sported before. Jason Lives is a fan favorite, one that should have paved the way for things to come, but remains a horror comedy island among a sea of trashy slashers.

‘Jason Never Dies’ Began With a Title
Image via Paramount Pictures

That wasn’t always the case, though. Initially, McLoughlin was interested in working on a follow-up to his first Jason movie. In an interview with Bloody Disgusting, McLoughlin explains that the whole process started out with a title, stating, “Originally, the title of Jason Lives was Jason Has Risen. Paramount thought that we might piss off a certain amount of the folks out there, and they had enough problems with the Jason franchise as it was. So they told me to come up with something else, and I came up with Jason Lives. So when I decided I was going to go for this sequel, the title went back to that – Jason Has Risen. But then I thought, ‘No, I love Jason Never Dies, because that’s kind of what’s happened now. There was something about that that I thought was cooler than Jason Has Risen.”

Straight out of the gate, just reading the title Jason Never Dies indicates that this movie would have carried the same swagger as Jason Lives. Until McLoughlin came along, these movies had subtitles that were highly indicative of the contents in their respective movies, but nothing too special. The Final Chapter and A New Beginning are fine, but Jason Lives and Jason Never Dies have such an over-the-top punk quality to them that you can’t help but get excited (but not as over the top of a title as Jason Goes to Hell, sheesh). They’re not just telling you where we’re at in the series’ timeline like A New Beginning does, they’re celebrating their titular slasher. Killer stuff, and part of the reason McLoughlin is perfect for crafting movies in this series.

What Actually Came After ‘Jason Lives’
Image via Paramount Pictures

Unfortunately, after Jason Lives was released, McLoughlin decided to step away from the franchise. He was offered the job to make another, but after toying with the idea of a Freddy vs. Jason style movie or a Friday the 13th meets Cheech and Chong crossover, he decided enough was enough. All of his ideas had been put into Lives! Instead, the sequel would be directed by John Carl Beuchler, titled Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Initially, Paramount sought out a high-profile director to keep Jason’s story going, but instead, they ended up pitting the slasher icon against a Carrie White-inspired lead. The New Blood is a good time, but it’s no Jason Lives. The series would continue to go downhill from there, with the last movie in the franchise being the 2009 reboot. Since then, rights issues have held new Friday the 13th movies back from happening. We, the fans, are mourning Jason’s absence in our lives.

Tom McLoughlin Is Still Planning ‘Jason Never Dies’
Image Via Paramount

Elsewhere, Tom McLoughlin’s brain has been running a million miles per hour with ideas. In that same Bloody Disgusting interview, he put it this way, “Cut to thirty-two years later, I’ve been thinking about this and had a bunch of different ideas that finally came together. I thought, ‘I’m going to do this.’ I know that the lawsuit’s been going on for seven, eight years? But it looked like they were getting close to some sort of compromise. I was getting word that it was going to get worked out. In that amount of time last year, I went and wrote it.” That’s right, in the time that he’s been waiting for the rights issues to be solved, McLoughlin went off and wrote Jason Never Dies. Sadly, until the issues are totally solved, no studios want to sit down with him and talk about it. So, until things could get rolling, he worked with an artist by the name of Walter Figueroa on concept art for Never Dies, just to give fans an idea of what he would be going for.

When going on to describe the film’s setting, McLoughlin once again proves that he has a deep understanding of what makes these movies work. He said, “Basically, I’ve always loved the fact that these movies work better, to me, in period, rather than modern day. People love that whole look of the ’80s and ’90s. And I thought, ‘Okay. First thing, I wanna take back artistic license and place this thirteen years later after I put him down in the lake.’ Through this series of circumstances, once again he comes back. This makes it 1999.”

RELATED: The ‘Friday The 13th’ Franchise Has a Kill So Gnarly They Did It Twice

‘Jason Never Dies’ Would Wipe Away Everything Since ‘Jason Lives’
Image via Paramount Pictures

So essentially, he would be working in the legacy sequel stratosphere of horror. That means no New Blood, no Jason Takes Manhattan or Jason Goes to Hell, and unfortunately, no Jason X. The eventual Freddy vs. Jason movie and the 2009 reboot would also be scrapped, and McLoughlin would have a totally blank canvas to do whatever he wants! This feels like it’s in the same vein as the recent trend of legacy sequels, but it doesn’t sound as though any old characters like Tommy Jarvis or Ginny from Part 2 are showing up. This move is just McLoughlin making room so that he doesn’t have to worry about any of the garbage (fun garbage) sequels that have come out since 1986. Hey, when you’re the guy that made Jason Lives you can go ahead and do whatever you want with the series. He also states that he would never have incorporated Y2K themes into Jason Never Dies, an idea that Friday the 13th fans probably didn’t even consider, but we appreciate McLoughlin’s clarity regardless.

Instead of focusing on the threat of Y2K, the filmmaker describes Jason Never Dies as following a group of Catholic school girls who go on a retreat over Thanksgiving weekend. The film would have seen the setting get snowed over, making them reroute their plans and head to Camp Crystal Lake. These characters would have no knowledge of Jason until he shows up and starts dicing them all up, so there would be no apprehension about staying at the camp. Thankfully, these kids would have a tough nun with them too, so Jason wouldn’t have it so easy this time around.

‘Jason Never Dies’ Would Stand on Its Own
Image via Paramount

This film already sounds super in line with McLoughlin’s previous Jason film. McLoughlin would go on to explain the differences between Jason Lives and Jason Never Dies, stating, “At the same time, I wanted to take one of the elements that was in Jason Lives, that people ask me about all the time, and kind of pay it off. So there is that continuity to mine. I really wrote this as a fan sitting there, and this is what I’d love to see onscreen, and went with it that way. But I also tried to build into it that, if you’d never seen a Friday the 13th before, or saw mine, it would still work as a film. But, if you were a fan, there’s lots of things that go on that you go ‘Oh yeah, that’s from Part VI.’ I tried to include that kind of dark humor and some of those elements.” Still, he reiterates that It’s going to be less of a horror comedy than Jason Lives, given a lot of the humor from that movie comes from the characters’ collective awareness of Jason. In Never Dies, the kids would have no awareness of the hockey-masked killer.

Whether it ends up similar or different from Jason Lives, getting a sequel to that film from the guy who actually directed it sounds fantastic. He’s not even coming at it from a business standpoint these days. Like he said, at this point, he just considers himself a fan! A ‘90s set Friday the 13th film would be a blast, and if it were successful, it makes you wonder if he would continue the story into the 21st century. As McLoughlin puts it, “I leave the ending in such a way that you know this is going to keep going on. There’s no question. I wanted to make sure that the thing stayed open-ended and can continue.” Let’s hope these rights issues get solved as soon as possible, and that no matter who ends up with them, they consider McLoughlin. It seems that more than anyone in the business, he knows what the Friday the 13th movies need.