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Paramount has put the machete back in the sheath.
With just less than six weeks go to before the start of principal photography, Paramount had shut down the latest iteration of Friday the 13th , multiple sources tell The Hollywood Reporter .
The move occurs on the same day the studio undated the pic , which was to have opened Oct. 13.
Platinum Dunes, the production company behind the film, and Breck Eisner, who was to have directed the movie, received word earlier in the day, according to multiple sources.
The film was in preproduction and, while not cast, heading toward a production start in mid-March.
The exact reason for the move is unclear, although one factor could be the poor performance of the studio’s horror movie, Rings. That pic, which like Friday the 13th was to have restarted a horror franchise, cost $25 million and bowed to $13 million over the weekend.
Sources say that execs quickly began second-guessing Friday the 13th, believing it would have chased the same audience, although others point out that the project is on the opposite spectrum of the horror scale.
A source close to Friday the 13th would only say that “the production was not ready to go at this date. ”
The project is a reboot of the 1980 slasher movie that proved to be a low-cost, high-yield film series for Paramount, spawning 11 sequels as it told the continuing blood-soaked adventures of Jason Vorhees, the seemingly unstoppable hockey mask-wearing killer of mostly hormonally charged teens.
