‘Friday the 13th’ Film Count Will Likely Be Surpassed by ‘Halloween’ in 2021

A rare phenomenon is about to take place in 2021 unless there is some sort of divine intervention. With the October ’21 release of Halloween Ends, the number of movies in the Halloween franchise will likely exceed that of Friday the 13th for the first time in nearly four decades. This of course includes sequels, in-name-only sequels, remakes/reboots, and crossovers. It’s also going to be the first time that an entire decade will have passed without the release of a single Friday the 13th film. This is in large part due to an ongoing lawsuit between original Friday screenwriter Victor Miller and director Sean S. Cunningham, which you can learn about here.

Friday the 13th writer Victor Miller has made it no secret that the motivation behind the film’s production was a desire to capitalize on the success of John Carpenter’s Halloween by “ripping it off”. The result was an effective chiller in its own right which, alongside Halloween, helped give birth to a new wave of movie monsters that would rule the 1980s and beyond. The original Friday relocated the carnage to a remote camp in New Jersey and amped up the blood and gore with the help of FX master Tom Savini.

It didn’t take long for the slasher craze to take hold. Once it became evident that there was an audience for this type of film, discussions of sequels began to take place among producers and studio execs. Neither of the creative teams behind Friday the 13th or Halloween originally intended for these movies to kick off franchises that would feature unstoppable killing machines, with seemingly endless cash flows. As far as John Carpenter was concerned, the story of Michael Myers was finished at the conclusion of 1978’s Halloween, and the creators of Friday the 13th did not plan for Jason Voorhees to become the killer in subsequent films.

1981 saw the first sequels to both Halloween and Friday the 13th, and it was off to the races. In 1982 the creators of Halloween decided to take the series in a different direction, since Michael Myers was apparently killed at the end of Halloween II. The intention was to roll out a different Halloween-themed film each year which would no longer feature the masked killer. Halloween III: Season of the Witch was released in October 1982 and was greeted with a fair amount of criticism and disappointment in its departure from the original concept. That same year, Jason Voorhees would don his trademark hockey mask for the first time in Friday the 13th Part III which was released theatrically in anaglyph 3D. 1982 was the last year that there was an equal number of movies in both franchises.

Following Halloween III, the series would take a five-year hiatus while Friday the 13th continued to churn out more sequels. 1984’s Friday the 13th:The Final Chapter promised to put an end to Jason Voorhees for good, but it raked in almost $33M in the US with a budget of less than $3M. A year later Friday the 13th: A New Beginning was released, but it faced criticism over the Jason imposter who was responsible for the film’s body count. In 1986, Jason Voorhees was resurrected in Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. This installment re-introduced Jason as a killer zombie who is now virtually invincible, ensuring the possibility for endless sequels should there be a demand for them.

“The Shape” made his comeback in 1988’s Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers in attempt to bring the franchise back to basics, with Michael now stalking his young niece Jamie, daughter of the now-deceased Laurie Strode. This storyline would of course be abandoned in later sequels. Also in 1988, Jason Voorhees would face off against a young woman with telekinetic abilities in Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood. Jason took a bite out of The Big Apple in 1989 with the release of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, while Michael exacted revenge in Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers.

After Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount Pictures sold the rights to the “Jason Voorhees” character to New Line Cinema, setting the stage for an eventual face-off between Jason and A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger. The next Friday came in 1993 in the form of Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, in which we were once again falsely assured of Jason’s imminent demise. Sporadic sequels and remakes in both slasher series would continue through the 1990s and 2000s, including 2003’s long-awaited Freddy vs. Jason, but since 1984 the higher film count belonged to Friday the 13th. With 2020’s release of Halloween Kills, both franchises will have twelve films under their belts. The counts will be equal for the first time since 1982, and when Halloween Ends comes around in 2021 the Halloween series will be the first to make it to thirteen (the irony!). Bet old Jason will be spinning in his watery grave.

Check out the list below for a complete chronology of Friday the 13th vs. Halloween films:

• 1978: Halloween
• 1980: Friday the 13th
• 1981: Halloween II, Friday the 13th Part 2
• 1982: Friday the 13th Part III, Halloween III: Season of the Witch
• 1984: Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter
• 1985: Friday the 13th: A New Beginning
• 1986: Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives
• 1988: Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers
• 1989: Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers
• 1993: Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday
• 1995: Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
• 1998: Halloween: H20
• 2002: Jason X, Halloween: Resurrection
• 2003: Freddy vs. Jason
• 2007: Rob Zombie’s Halloween
• 2009: Friday the 13th, Rob Zombie’s Halloween II
• 2018: Halloween
• 2020: Halloween Kills
• 2021: Halloween Ends