But What Do They Have in Store?
It’s hard to believe now but there was a time when Gun Media’s Friday the 13th was a potential Dead by Daylight Killer. Rather than DBD’s fast-paced chases, simple objectives, and variety of killers, Friday the 13th gave players more variety as far as it came to ways to survive, the option to fight back against Jason – an option which only got exploited as soon as the trolls found a way to stunlock the killer – and a feel more directly inspired by eighties slasher flicks.
Internet: “Wes what does this mean for @fearthegun and the future? Will you make another multiplayer horror game?”
Me: pic.twitter.com/1tlQQCklrX
— WesKeltner (@weskeltner) November 3, 2020
Sadly, thanks to a long-standing lawsuit which looks to have no end in sight, Gun Media were forced to abandon a lengthy roadmap for future content. The TLDR of the lawsuit is as follows: The person who wrote the original script has the right to reclaim the copyright after x amount of years, but the original movie’s producer claims that the script was created while the writer was employed by the producer’s company, and so the copyright rightfully belongs to him.
There’s more to it than that, but as a result any new media – including future updates to Friday the 13th – were put on hold indefinitely until the courts can decide who owns the rights.
Gun Media have bounced back and they’re reportedly getting ready to step back into the slasher water, and if a series of cryptic tweets compiled in this Reddit post are anything to go by, it could see another Slasher legend getting his own game: Michael Myers.
Just to chill my TL. Yes this is for the next project. No, it is not for F13.
— WesKeltner (@weskeltner) December 3, 2020
The short version is that Gun Media has been hinting for a few months that they’re working on a new horror project, including the possibility of it being multiplayer. They recently tweeted the above image showing a mo-cap studio and, allegedly, Jason Vorhees actor Kane Hodder is visible next to a man on the computer in the lower-left image. I couldn’t see a man on a computer in that image but hey, take that as you will. Kane Hodder has been asked about the image, however, and responded:
“I don’t know if you know about the video-game, I did the motion capture for Jason in the video-game and currently doing a new video-game, another horror franchise that I can’t talk about yet but you’ll see eventually.”
So where’s the Halloween connection? Well, Keitner kicked off speculation with some cryptic tweets aimed at Blumhouse studios, which currently own the rights to the Halloween franchise, among other horror series, and it’s hard to think of many movie villains more iconic than Michael Myers. After all, he was the first licensed killer introduced to Dead by Daylight, and given that Ash appears there and now has his own video game to look forward to, who’s to say Michael can’t join in on the fun?
Do you think this is all speculation? Let us know in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.