'Harold & Kumar Christmas' Helmer Todd Strauss-Schulson Gets Scary With 'Final Girls'

Whatever you thought of "A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas" (and, internally, we were divided too), you had to admit that, from a directorial stand point, there was a fair amount of zip there. Todd Strauss-Schulson, who made his debut with 'Harold & Kumar 3D,' has already been tapped by Warner Bros. for "Family Getaway," an action comedy that made this year's Black List, but he's just been lined up for another gig, this time with Warner Bros.' sister studio New Line. And it sounds like it could be a scream. 

The project is called "Final Girls" and is described by the report in Variety as a mix between "Back to the Future" and "Friday the 13^th," following a young girl whose scream queen mother has just died. She and a group of (presumably female) friends are then sucked into her mother's most famous 1980s slasher movie, and mother and daughter must fight for their lives together. Sounds like kind of a nifty idea, no?

The script was written by Mark Fortin and Josh Miller, who Coming Soon points out were attached to Robert Rodriguez's failed "Women in Chains!" television series (which the director was prepping for his wife Rose McGowan) way back in 2008. The title for "Final Girls" comes from influential feminist text "Men, Women and Chain Saws: Gender in Modern Horror Film" by Carol Clover (a must-read, truly), which describes the "last girl" as the most virtuous, virginal female character and obviously the only one to survive the crazed killer. The book was hugely influential on Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" and has been cited by Joss Whedon as key reading.

Whether or not any feminist subtext survives the final script remains to be seen, as the movie is still in the scripting stages. We could very easily see this thing get 3D-ified and, for once, we don't think that would be a completely awful thing, especially with Strauss-Schulson behind the wheel.