Friday the 13th Remake Producers Speak

We had a chance at Comic Con to sit down with Brad Fuller and Andrew Form at a roundtable interview to talk Friday the 13th the remake. A round table being you know.. the round table we sit at and throw hard hitting questions Barbara Walters style at them.

Andrew and Brad have become well known for doing remakes. They have done the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the Hitcher but they dont say yes to every remake. They told us they were approached to do a CHUD remake and an April Fools Day remake and said no to both. They also wanted to do the Halloween remake but were not able to get it and of course Rob Zombie did it. They have more coming in the form of The Birds, and they told us they would ove to do a Poltergeist remake.. so they are two busy guys.

Here is what they had to tell us about the upcoming release of the Friday the 13th Remake.

Brian: We've been very lucky that some studios have brought to us ideas, different franchises in the past. This was one that as soon as they brought it to us, we jumped right on board. It was an arduous journey to get the rights cleared. Even after a studio approaches you, there's a lot. There's a long process of trying to figure it out. It probably took almost two years from that initial phone call to the script. Through it all we were always, always adamant that we wanted to make a movie where Jason Voorhees is a brutal killer. Where he runs and it's real and it's really horrifying. We went through three incarnations of writers before we got the one that we wanted. Once the tone of the movie was right, then we went all systems go.

Andrew: Well, we don't let you down.

Brian: There are so many boobies. I would say to you that this is our seventh movie that we've done as a company. This is our seventh movie together. We've done seven movies. We've never had any nudity. We've made up for it all in this movie.

Brian: Absolutely the reason we wanted to do this movie. We knew when we were doing the movie.

Brian: Listen, we don't have any violence when there's nudity. There are kids, there's a lot of kids having sex. That's part of what happens.

Andrew: They're not just nude having sex. They do other things nude.

Brian: They water ski nude.

Andrew: They love it, yeah.

Brian: No rules, we threw out the - - the rules are everyone dies. That's the rule.

Brian: Everyone's promiscuous nowadays. And you're in his turf.

Brian: No, what we wanted to do, really when you talk about that universe, let's take it back to what the original movies were which was a movie that took place at a camp with a guy who is a ruthless killer and who's terrifying and not a joke and not doing stupid things. We want it to be real and horrifying so that was the core tenet of this movie to us. That was what we were always working towards was to make him feel real and scary.

Brian: It's cold out there.

Brian: No, it's cold.

Andrew: That's how he rolls.

Brian: There are people like that.

Brian: I think you have to keep that theme song in the movie. I mean, it's disrespectful not to. Drew does the money, right? So I'll say, "Can we do this?" He's good with money because we're usually on budget and if it were up to me, we'd go wildly over budget. But when that came up and there was a check to write, he was the first one who says, "We've got to write that check."

Andrew: Yeah, we locked that down before we shot a day of film.

Brian: So it was interesting today (referring to the Friday the 13th panel at Comic-Con) because that piece, it's never going to live again. I think it lives and dies up there today. That's not going to be the teaser that goes into theaters and that's not going to be the trailer. It was a little bit of a test for us to put that music piece in there and to hear the audience erupt the first time. We didn't suspect that would happen. That was kind of surprising that they just…

Andrew: It's iconic, it really is. You can go to black and just play that and people know what movie it is.

Brian: Let me answer that. This is a world where the kids in our movie are aware of Jason Voorhees certainly and of what happened at Camp Crystal Lake. Hopefully, if we did our job right, it's not a bunch of kids sitting around and people disappearing and people are wondering what's happening. I think that what attracted us to the script is a lot of the killing happens at the same time so that you aren't doing that. First of all, we have 13 people to kill in 95 minutes which is more than we've ever had to do. But we really tried to do it. We don't want audiences to go, "Jesus, those kids are dumb." You can't avoid it on some level because you're going to a horror movie but it's something that we're definitely always striving to eliminate.

Brian: Well, listen, Daniel did a great job for us on our Texas Chainsaw. This movie looks beautiful but it doesn't look polished but it looks beautiful. I mean, he is a genius. He really is a genius and it makes everything for us, I mean we love working with him.

Brian: That's right. She would've lived the whole movie.

Brian: That's not what we're doing. I don't want to misconstrue it. It's not that. In our movie, Jason Voorhees is a guy who lives in the wilderness and he traps. He traps his food and he's got his world that he doesn't want people infringing on. If you infringe on his world, he's gonna kill you.

Brian: No. We did that in Texas Chainsaw The Beginning and I think one of the reasons that that movie didn't do as well as the first one is we made, I shouldn't say we made, but the mistake potentially there was Thomas Hewitt was a sympathetic character. I don't think audiences want their killers to be sympathetic. I think they want them to be hell bent on one thing and one thing only. So we've eliminated that here. I think we have a device, a flashback that we're trying to figure out how it works into the movie, if it works into the movie. Beyond that, this is Jason Voorhees doing what he does best.

Andrew: Ha ha ha. Who knows? The sweater was on the wardrobe truck. I've seen the sweater. We have seen the sweater.

Brian: We shot a couple deaths I actually think different ways. Not where their death is questionable, whether or not it happens. Just where we want to make sure that the deaths are really effective and we weren't sure when we were on set so there's a couple different options. But I don't think there's going to be any - - there's not going to be any characters who in one cut of the movie they live and in another cut they die.

Brian: Well, I think that because we shot a movie that's long, I think the assembly was probably two and a half hours. The final movie will be 90 minutes so there's an hour of stuff that we're going to have to cut out of the movie. That DVD will be long and I can't imagine that the ratings board is going to be euphoric about giving us an R rating with what we're going to turn into them.

Andrew: Probably late September/Early October.