Stephen King is preternaturally prolific, having rarely gone a year without publishing something, be it a novel, a collection, or another 1,000-page epic to obsess over. And that’s why there’s no excuse for the author not to nut up and actually finish the story he so cruelly teased fans with on Sunday night.
“The best novel idea I never wrote (and probably never will) is I JASON, the first-person narrative of Jason Voohees [sic], and his hellish fate: killed over and over again at Camp Crystal Lake. What a hellish, existential fate!” King wrote on Twitter, prompting followers to take up torches and pitchforks as they demanded he write the novel right this instant.
Among them were John Hodgeman and Patton Oswalt (the latter of whom had a cameo of sorts in King’s last proper novel, The Institute):
King’s interest in movie monsters dates back to his childhood, and a good chunk of Danse Macabre, his 1981 non-fiction genre dissection, works to unpack their history, meaning, and impact. Classic movie monsters also play a role in It, though they’re more of the Wolfman and Creature From The Black Lagoon variety. And while slashers have never really been King’s bag, the exploration of flawed monsters, the ravages of time, and the degenerative nature of rebirth certainly is.
But let’s not hold our breath.
“Just thinking about the legal thicket one would have to go through to get permissions makes my head ache. And my heart, that too.,” King wrote in a follow-up tweet. “But gosh, shouldn’t someone tell Jason’s side of the story?” (He’s not kidding about the legal thicket.)
King, of course, isn’t the first person to have this idea. As Bloody Disgusting’s John Squires pointed out, Unmasked: Part 25 explored this very Groundhog Day-esque idea back in 1988. And there’s always Behind The Mask: The Rise Of Leslie Vernon, which at least offers a meta look at the horror tropes associated with a Jason-like slasher.
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