Today I sat down with Platinum Dunes producing partners Andrew Form and Bradley Fuller - the duo responsible for relaunching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises - and asked them about their plans for a number of upcoming genre projects, including Ouija, The Butcherhouse Chronicles, their reimaginings of Monster Squad and The Birds, and the suddenly-on-hold Friday the 13th: Part 2 The two producers chatted about all these projects, and explained how and why they're expanding their focus to include action and family films. Read our complete conversation after the jump.

Is Friday the 13th: Part 2 completely dead?

Form: I don't know if a movie is ever completely dead. We would like to believe it's not completely dead. It's not moving forward, unfortunately, right now. We love our screenplay. We loved making the first one. We'd love to make the second one. It just didn't seem like it's moving forward right now.  

Fuller: When we made the first one, the studios were making a lot more product. And it feels like with the economic slowdown, studios are making less movies, which means there are less slots to release a movie. So, on Friday the 13th, there are two studios in there. Even though the movie was very profitable, it was half as profitable for each studio, because they had to split the money. And then if you're a publicly traded company that owns that studio and you're looking at four to six slots a year, do you go with a horror movie? Just in general, do you go with a horror movie? Our movies are inexpensive, relatively speaking. But a 3-D version of a horror movie is a realistic investment - it's not like Texas Chainsaw, which we made for nine and a half million dollars. That movie cost some money to make in 3-D, and so do you take the shot on a 3-D horror movie when you can do a family movie, or a big comedy with a huge actor. It feels like both studios right now are very intent on putting out the movies where they have a much better shot at getting a bigger return. It's purely a financial decision. I think the executives there all loved the movies and had a great time doing them, but at the end of the day these are publicly traded companies, and they have a responsibility to their shareholders. Does that make sense? It's boring as hell but that's the truth.

One project that is moving forward right now is Monster Squad. You guys have said that you have four different “takes” on that, one of which will become a script. Can you comment on how the tone of these four takes vary?

Fuller: Tonally, it's the same as the movie it's gonna be. It's the same tone as Goonies.

Form: It's a PG-13 film. And of course we will try to make it as scary as possible, as far as they will allow us. It's got monsters in it, the setting may change a little bit. But it's what we've done with these other films. I think we're just gonna try to do that with Monster Squad. It is a movie we're very excited about, and hopefully within a week or two, there is a writer or writers writing the screenplay. That seems like something Paramount and ourselves are very excited about.

So when you say there are four takes, they vary in story, as opposed to tone?

Fuller: Exactly. Yeah.

Your version of The Birds is still in development...

Form: [Laughs.] We're gonna be talking about this in junkets for the rest of our lives, and it's the same answer every time. I'm sorry. We're working on the script.

Fuller: We're working on the script. It's got a great director and hopefully something great happens with it. We just hired Dennis Iliadis [2009's The Last House on the Left] and he's an amazing director. Hopefully he's the guy who can crack it with a writer.

Form: It goes back to the short story by Daphne du Maurier.

Where are you with The Butcherhouse Chronicles?

Form: In development. Not moving forward right now. It's The Breakfast Club in a haunted house, very fun. A group of kids who aren't necessarily friends in high school are put into a situation together and have to survive through it. It's fun and it's scary.

You also have your Ouija project.

Form: Yes, Ouija we're very excited about.

There's never really been a definitive Ouija film.

Fuller: Well, we're just the guys to bring it to you. [Laughs.]

Form: We have amazing writers on that movie, the guys who wrote Tron. They're working on the screenplay. We're looking forward to it. It's a big family adventure movie. So we're very excited about that.

Do you see a point where the two of you will take a break from horror?

Fuller: Not by choice. I don't think we are going to consciously stop making horror movies. But we're producers and we're going to make what the studio is looking for, and it feels to me...

Form: Well, it's clear that there are less horror movies in the marketplace, this year especially. There's only been two that have come out this year. Am I wrong? We had The Crazies and... So we would be the second, and it's May now, and the next one would be Splice. And then I think we jump all the way to...

Fuller: Halloween.

Form: Halloween. You have Piranha - I'm not sure when they're coming out... But there's five or six horror films the entire year. Two years ago I think there were two or three a month. It really slowed down a lot.

Fuller: So we'd keep making them if that's what the studios wanted.

Do you think thinks have slowed due to the changing zeitgeist or is it just financial considerations?

Fuller: Do you really want to know? Because I'll tell you, but I think your readers will be bored. It's DVDs. DVD numbers are down on everything, but they're down substantially on horror. I think the studios could make a horror movie and even if it didn't do well theatrically they could always recoup their costs from the DVD market, and that's basically evaporated, or come close to that. So there's no safety net. But I think when you look at the landscape of the movies the studios are making now, that's pervasive in every genre. That's why every movie you're reading about, or many of them, are franchises or TV shows or something where they know how to market it, and there's a built-in audience. But it feels like what the studios are trying to do is if there's a built-in audience it helps mitigate the risk, where the DVD market used to be that level of comfort. Boring but true.

Form: We are a boring interview. [Laughs.]

Your upcoming Existence 2.0 is not a horror film...

Form: Not a horror film. In the vein of Face-Off.

Fuller: A big action movie.

Form: It was a pitch, and the guys are writing. We're very excited. We love that concept, and we love everything that those guys are working on. It's a cool one for us.

Fuller: And then we sold something last week to a big studio too. We can't talk about what it is, but that's a big action movie.

So you're inclined to broaden and do action now?

Fuller: Yes.

Form: Yeah. We might have a good one that we're gonna talk about real soon.

Fuller: Yeah, we might have a big one.

Form: A nice fun one.

Fuller: Drew and I came up in the Jerry Bruckheimer/Don Simpson era. Those are the movies we loved, those are the movies that make us want to do what we do. You want to do that. We love the horror thing too, but, as I said, we love making movies more than we love horror or action. And it feels like what the studios are looking for now is not as much horror but more action. And since we have that experience we're gonna try to give it a shot.