Legal Disputes Over ‘Friday the 13th’ Rights Get Real Messy In Court

In the past year, we’ve seen announcements about a new Friday the 13th movie hiring/losing writers and directors, casting notices go out, and ultimately saw the plug get pulled on all plans for a new sequel happening anytime soon. Sadly, things look to only get more complicated moving forward, as the original film’s writer, Victor Miller, is hoping to reclaim ownership of the property while the original film’s director, Sean S. Cunningham, claims Miller made the script as “work-for-hire” and has no ownership.

The Hollywood Reporter explains that Horror, Inc. and Manny Company, a successor to the company that originally produced Friday the 13th, filed papers claiming Cunningham conceived the idea of a slasher that capitalized on the success of Halloween, and hired Miller, among other writers, to develop the idea.

Miller was, and still is, a member of the Writer’s Guild of America, so if the producers’ claims are true, under copyright law, any work created while under employment would be property of the employer, in this case, the WGA.

Additionally, even if it is determined that Miller retains ownership rights of the original script, that film did not see the masked Jason Voorhees as a killer. This model was adopted for every subsequent sequel, but the character only appeared as a child in the first film while his mother was the killer. This means Miller would have no ownership over the “Friday the 13th” title nor the adult “Jason” character.

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Miller, however, disputes his employment of the WGA at the time he developed the initial treatment of the film and the work he did on the script, while also mentioning that the finished film ended up virtually the same as his treatment with minor revisions.

So what does this all mean for the future of the franchise? Well, it’s complicated.

Depending on what happens in court, it’s possible that new films can come out based on the existing canon, but they could be prohibited from using the “Jason” character. Internationally, however, films could be made that feature the hockey mask-wearing killer, but they wouldn’t be able to be released domestically.

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It’s been almost a decade since we’ve last seen a Friday the 13th movie, with 2009 seeing a back to basics reboot of the franchise, with Jason having previously gone to the future, outer space, Hell, and battle Freddy Krueger.

Many reports have swirled about what direction the upcoming films were to take, ranging from a found footage format, exploring Jason’s father, or potentially using the concept of Jason being a twin.