Oh where oh where has Jason Voorhees gone, oh where oh where can he be? It’s been almost ten years since Friday the 13th fans have seen a new installment in the franchise, which is pretty crazy considering the 2009 reboot reportedly cost a modest $19 million and went on to gross a cool $91 million at the worldwide box office. So what happened?

You may remember that the folks at Platinum Dunes were developing a new take on the material at Paramount for a few years after the studio landed the rights in 2013. There were a few false starts along the way, including a version that was set to be directed by The Signal helmer David Bruckner. Ultimately, the studio brought in Prisoners scribe Aaron Guzikowski and The Crazies director Breck Eisner, and that version of the film was only weeks away from filming when Paramount pulled the plug. Again, what happened?

Platinum Dunes producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form have been making the press round for their upcoming horror A Quiet Place and they’ve offered up some new insight about how that film fell apart and what’s in store for the future of Friday the 13th.

Speaking with Rooster Teeth, Fuller explained that the film’s abrupt cancellation came from the Studio’s administration, who didn’t have much love to spare for horror.

“We never got a clear answer from Paramount as to why that movie got shut down. I think at the end of the day that administration, which is no longer there, didn’t see horror as a viable part of what they were doing. Also they were coming off of Rings and that didn’t help.

For studio heads who are not fans of horror there’s not a tremendous amount of glory in it other than the financial. A lot of these studios want to make big movies with big movie stars and that administration could never get excited about it. I think the rights now have reverted back to New Line.”

Paramount’s delay on Friday the 13th allowed them to revert back to the Warner Bros. sister studio New Line Cinema, where they’re currently caught in a bit of a holding pattern due to an ongoing lawsuit with original writer Victor Miller. In case you missed it Miller is invoking a provision of copyright law that allows authors to reclaim ownership over their material and terminate rights. However, the folks who currently hold the rights argue that Miller wrote Friday the 13th as work-for-hire and has no claim to the rights.

Fuller explained the situation to the folks over at JoBlo, lamenting the challenges they’ve faced in getting a new installment in front of cameras.

“Fans think it’s so simple, that if we want to make the movie we can go make it, and that’s just not the case. There are rights issues; originally, Warner Bros. owned the rights, then Paramount had them for a couple of years, and now I think the rights are reverting back to Warner Bros. At the same time, there’s this on-going lawsuit with Victor Miller. If there’s a lawsuit hanging over the rights, it’s problematic, you can’t really make the movie until that gets settled. And now the movie is at New Line, and we’ve made a lot of movies with those guys, but that’s not our home studio anymore.”

No doubt, there’s no way a studio is going to invest in a property while there’s an ongoing lawsuit but make no mistake, Fuller and Form still want to make a Friday the 13th movie. It’s a matter of rights, and if New Line wants to make the movie.

“So the question is, do they want to make the movie with us? If they want to make that movie with us, we will drop what we’re doing to make that movie. We had such a great experience making Friday the 13th, it was a dream come true to watch those movies as a kid and then be a part of it. So I don’t really have a clear answer.”

So there it is folks, a bit more insight into why the machete-swinging horror icon Jason Voorhees is idling dead in the waters of Camp Crystal Lake. Of course, as we all know, Jason never dies, so here’s hoping the rights issue clears up sooner than later so he can get back to slashing up lusty teens, battling Freddy Kreuger and all the bloody business he’s best at.