Ahead of this week’s Friday the 13th — the first of three in 2026! — Friday the 13th (2009) writing duo Damian Shannon and Mark Swift have opened up about their unmade sequel to the slasher reboot.
“Winter has never been done in the Friday the 13th franchise, and we’ve always dreamed about it,” Swift told ComicBook.com. “We want to see visible breath coming through the holes in the hockey mask. We want to see red blood drips in pristine white snow. We want Jason to jab a long sharp icicle through a camp counselor’s eye.”
Swift continues, “In the opening scene, Crystal Lake is frozen solid. Two naughty teens go out onto the frozen ice to play hockey. The puck slides… and stops right on top of what appears to be a dead girl under the ice. It’s Whitney from our last chapter.
“Then, on the shoreline, they see an imposing figure who looks like he wants to join them. Only he isn’t holding a hockey stick. It’s a machete.”
The reveal of Whitney’s corpse confirms that the 2009 film’s final girl, played by Amanda Righetti, did not survive the wrath of Jason Voorhees.
After the cold open, Shannon and Swift’s sequel would have seen Camp Crystal Lake open for business once again. “We had a really awesome zipline kill that I always loved,” Shannon teased.
For more details, read through the opening scene and the zipline kill, which the writers previously shared online.
While the sequel never came to fruition, A24’s Friday the 13th prequel series “Crystal Lake” is due out later this year on Peacock. Meanwhile, Shannon and Swift went on to pen Sam Raimi’s Send Help, in theaters now.
