Jason Voorhees is coming back to the big screen. A brand-new Friday the 13th movie is officially in the works — the 13th film in the franchise, the first since the 2009 reboot, and the first time Jason has stalked theaters in 18 years. The film is set to hit theaters in 2027, and the announcement landed, fittingly, on Friday the 13th itself.
The new film comes from Horror Inc. and the Barsamian family, who are financing and producing, with CatchLight Studios on board as a partner and Cineverse holding the North American theatrical rights. David Fliegel is writing the script. No title, cast, or plot details have been announced yet — but the name in the director's chair is the one that has horror fans talking.
Steve Miner Returns: The Man Who Gave Jason the Mask
Directing the new film is Steve Miner — and if you know this franchise, you know exactly why that matters. Miner directed Friday the 13th Part II in 1981, the film that introduced the adult Jason Voorhees as the killer and put a machete in his hands. One year later, he directed Friday the 13th Part III, the film where Jason picked up a hockey mask — a Detroit Red Wings goalie mask, chosen during a lighting check — and one of the most recognizable images in horror history was born.
In other words, the two things the entire world pictures when they hear the name Jason Voorhees — the machete and the mask — both came from Steve Miner. Bringing him back more than four decades later is more than a nostalgia play. It puts the franchise's relaunch in the hands of the filmmaker who built its iconography in the first place, at a moment when the series is being rebuilt from the ground up under the Jason Universe banner.
Friday the 13th Franchise Timeline: 1980 to 2027
The road back to Crystal Lake has been a long one. The original Friday the 13th arrived in 1980, with Pamela Voorhees — not Jason — as the killer. Jason took over in Part II (1981), found the mask in Part III (1982), and supposedly died in The Final Chapter (1984). He did not stay dead: A New Beginning (1985), Jason Lives (1986), The New Blood (1988) and Jason Takes Manhattan (1989) followed, before Jason Goes to Hell (1993), the space-set Jason X (2001), and the crossover event Freddy vs. Jason in 2003, still the franchise's biggest box-office hit.
The 2009 reboot, Friday the 13th, earned roughly $91 million worldwide and seemed to set up a new era. Instead, the franchise froze. A long-running legal battle over the original screenplay's rights kept Jason off movie screens for years, sequels were announced and abandoned, and one of horror's most bankable icons sat on the shelf while Freddy, Michael, and Chucky all got their revivals. The 2027 film ends that freeze — 18 years after the reboot, 47 years after the original.
What Crystal Lake Set Up
The movie does not arrive in a vacuum. Peacock's prequel series Crystal Lake, starring Linda Cardellini as Pam Voorhees, dropped all eight episodes on October 15 and became a genuine hit — 1.3 billion minutes viewed in its first 11 days, a No. 3 ranking among streaming originals, and an 86% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. We broke down the numbers in our coverage of Crystal Lake: Peacock's 1.3 Billion-Minute Monster — and notably, that success has still not produced a Season 2 renewal announcement.
That is the landscape the new movie walks into: a streaming prequel that proved the appetite is still enormous, a fanbase that has waited nearly two decades, and a franchise being actively rebuilt across film and television at the same time. The series told the story of the mother. The 2027 film brings back the son.
What We Still Don't Know
Plenty. There is no title yet, no casting — including the all-important question of who wears the mask — and no plot details. We do not know whether the film connects to the Crystal Lake series, reboots the timeline again, or picks up somewhere in the original run. There is no exact 2027 release date; a Friday the 13th on the calendar would be the obvious target, and the franchise has never been shy about that kind of symmetry. Expect the title and casting to be the next dominoes, with production news to follow.
What we know is enough: Jason is back, the man who gave him the mask is directing, and Crystal Lake is open again. Ki ki ki, ma ma ma.
Steve Miner gave Jason the mask — is he the right director to bring him back, or should a new filmmaker have taken Crystal Lake? Tell us in the comments.
— Twin Towerz Entertainment
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