There’s finally an update on that Friday the 13th legal battle that just does not want to end. As fans of the horror series will know, Jason Voorhees remains chained up at the bottom of Camp Crystal Lake until the rights to the series can be sorted out in the courtroom. It’s been a very slow process unfortunately, but a new update brings the battle another big step forward toward its conclusion.
Per THR, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled in Victor Miller’s favor. This follows a previous decision in 2018 when it was decided by a judge that Miller was entitled to reclaim his rights to the original Friday the 13th screenplay. Sean S. Cunningham and rights-holders Horror Inc. appealed the decision, hoping that this would get a reversal, but it’s only resulted in another win for Miller. It also seems to imply that the legal battle could be finally over, although there’s still a chance Cunningham could successfully argue for the case to be reheard by the Appeals Court, or even be petitioned to the Supreme Court as the next step.
During the production of Friday the 13th, Miller was brought in by Cunningham to write the script. He is responsible for creating the Jason Voorhees character along with other events that occur in that first movie. Because copyright law allowed him to reclaim his rights to the script, he had sought to do so until Cunningham filed a lawsuit to block it from happening. And thus, the legal battle had begun.
As it stands, Victor Miller is set to reclaim the rights to Friday the 13th with his latest victory. However, the rights only pertain to the domestic rights, and Cunningham/Horror Inc. will still hold the foreign rights. Miller’s rights pertaining to Jason Voorhees also would only include the child version of the character who emerges from the lake, and not the monster in the hockey mask we’ve come to know in the sequels. These issues will all need to still be ironed out before a new film can be made, but this is still tremendous progress and puts us closer than we’ve been in years to getting a new Friday the 13th.
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