It’s fashionable to remake classic horror pictures right now. The best part of the trend is that the director doesn’t have to have much talent to sign on. Just look at this year’s horrid Halloween remake. If that’s how we’re going to treat a time-honored franchise, why should remakes of other classic franchises be any different?

Actually, it appears the powers behind a remake of Friday the 13th may be eyeing the more successful re-do of a different franchise: 2003’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In fact, word from Shock Till You Drop has it that the director behind that remake, Marcus Nispel, is in talks to direct the new Friday the 13th, which would not be a sequel but a reboot of the franchise.

I didn’t mind The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. In fact, I thought the new version of the film brought some interesting things into play, namely R. Lee Ermy’s Sheriff Hoyt. Unfortunately the needless prequel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, showed that Ermy alone wasn’t enough to hold a picture together, which kind of gives some credibility to Nispel, since he wasn’t behind the prequel. By that logic, Nispel isn’t a bad choice to take on Jason; certainly a better decision than Jonathan Liebesman, who did direct The Beginning and was the first rumored name for Friday the 13th.

However, if you’ve seen Marcus Nispel’s other “major” picture, Pathfinder, you know there’s the possibility that the Chainsaw remake was a fluke. Remember: Pathfinder was pushed back continually for over a year and even renamed before its release, which turned into a drastic failure. The movie was weak, both from a story and filmmaking perspective, which makes me doubt Nispel’s ability to take on Friday the 13th. I guess we can hope that Pathfinder was the fluke, but either way Nispel has proven to be inconsistent as a filmmaker.

Personally, I think fans will scrutinize a Jason remake more than Leatherface and Michael Myers’s stories. Jason has always been more mainstream than the other two. However, the Friday the 13th remake was among those projects that had scripts completed pre-strike, so one way or another this movie’s coming. Only time will tell if Nispel is the right man for the job.