There are many reasons why Friday the 13th shouldn’t have spawned nine sequels, a Nightmare on Elm Street crossover and a reboot, from poor reviews to repetitive content. However, it seemed that nothing could stop supernatural killer Jason Voorhees from chopping up an endless collection of young expendable teens. So it doesn’t quite compute that the last time we saw the machete-wielding maniac was all the way back in 2009 when the franchise was given a reboot that was actually slightly better received by critics than the original when it released in 1980. The reason behind the lack of further sequels lies in that age old dispute of who owns the rights to the characters and who makes the money off of them. Now it seems that at least part of the dispute could finally be coming to an end.

It was originally in 2018 when a court ruled that Victor Miller, the screenwriter on the original Friday the 13th, was the sole owner of the screenplay in the U.S. and that led to longtime Friday the 13th director and producer Sean Cunningham launching a number of appeals against the decision. Now it looks like the courts have once again sided with Miller in the dispute, which essentially comes down to Miller not owning the rights to the script he was hired to write for Cunningham, who has since been claiming all the financial rewards for the franchise over the last forty years.

Attorney Larry Zerner, who appeared in Friday the 13th: Part III and has been following the case for a long while, posted an update on his Twitter account, stating that the case is now apparently over, but that doesn’t mean we will be getting more movies in the near future. He wrote:

"It's 4 pm and I still don't see a cert petition filed with the Supreme Court in the Friday the 13th case. What does this mean? Well, it means the case is officially over and Victor Miller owns the rights to his screenplay in F13 (but only in the US). Does this mean that the parties have settled or are close to settling (and a new movie is forthcoming)? Not necessarily, it could just mean that Sean Cunningham realized that a cert petition was a real longshot and didn't want to waste his money. However, the fact that he didn't file a cert petition makes it (very) slightly more likely that the parties are working out a resolution. But I wouldn't hold my breath."

So why is this not necessarily a clear path to a new Friday the 13th movie? Well it simply comes down to the complex nature of where the rights now sit. As Zerner succinctly explained, “Can Victor and Sean just each make their own separate movies? Not really, because Victor only owns US rights and only to the first script and Sean owns adult, hockey mask-wearing Jason but can't legally use him in a movie without Victor's permission. It's complicated."

As it stands, for a new Friday the 13th of any description to be made and released it will require both parties to agree on some kind of joint venture or at least a percentage share in the profits from any resulting film, similar in many ways to the arrangement in place between Disney and Sony to allow the use of Spider-Man in the MCU but obviously not quite on the same scale. Whether Zerner’s vague belief that the events of this latest appeal mean Miller and Cunningham are coming to some kind of compromise over the future of Jason Voorhees is something we can only hold tight and wait to find out.