Stephen King Yearned to Write an ‘Existential’ Horror Novel About Friday the 13th’s Jason

Watching a hockey mask-wearing killer murder dozens of campers in the Friday the 13th franchise may not scream: “We need his point of view!” But it turns out horror icon Stephen King’s “best novel idea” he never penned was the story of, you guessed it, the indescribably immortal Jason Voorhees.

In a series of tweets (as reported by Entertainment Weekly), King said he previously had an idea to tell “Jason’s side of the story” in a companion novel, called I Jason, focusing on his origins and the awfulness of being “killed over and over again at Camp Crystal Lake.”

Kind of like Happy Death Day meets that new Hunger Games prequel novel, with a little Cabin in the Woods for good measure. King later tweeted that it would’ve been hard to get this project off the ground due to rights issues, but suggested studios could take up the hatchet-sized mantle and make a movie out of it.

King’s idea stems from what happened in the later films in the horror franchise, which has seen 12 releases since Friday the 13th debuted in 1980. After all, for the first couple of movies, Jason wasn’t really dying. He was always “left for dead,” or impersonated by someone else. The first Friday the 13th was about Jason’s mother getting vengeance against the camp for the supposed death of her son, Jason—with the sequel revealing that Jason was actually alive, and out for blood. Subsequent movies kept nearly-almost killing Jason until he was finally, totally defeated in Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter.

Or so they thought.

Starting with Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, the movie kept finding reasons to resurrect Jason, bringing him back from the dead to kill campers, go to space, and fight Freddy Kreuger. This went on for years. The franchise hit a refresh with 2009’s Michael Bay-produced Friday the 13th reboot, but ongoing rights issues (and a seeming lack of interest) seemed to stop Jason’s killing streak dead in the water. King may not be willing to don the hockey mask and bring Jason back once more, but who knows: Maybe Blumhouse can do it.

King’s latest project is an adaptation of his novel The Stand, which is set to debut on CBS All Access later this year.

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