We got some exciting and spooky news this Halloween! Peacock gave a straight-to-series order for an “expanded prequel” of the Friday the 13th franchise called Crystal Lake. Bryan Fuller (Hannibal, the first season of American Gods, the first season of Star Trek: Discovery) is on board to write, executive produce and showrun.
According to Variety, Victor Miller, the writer behind the franchise’s original film, will also executive produce along with Marc Toberoff, Rob Barsamian, and A24.
“I discovered Friday the 13th in the pages of Famous Monsters magazine when I was 10 years old and I have been thinking about this story ever since,” Fuller said in a statement. “When it comes to horror, A24 raises the bar and pushes the envelope and I’m thrilled to be exploring the camp grounds of Crystal Lake under their banner. And Susan Rovner [chairman of entertainment content of NBCUniversal and Streaming] is simply the best at what she does. It’s a pleasure and an honor to be working with her again.”
We don’t have any details yet on what the plot of Crystal Lake will be, other than that it will be an “expanded prequel” to the original 1980 film, where campers at Crystal Lake have gruesome run-ins with Jason Voorhees (or, more accurately for this first film, his mom). Miller recently gained U.S. rights to his screenplay, so this series will be able to pull from that movie but not any subsequent Friday the 13th films. This means that Jason’s signature hockey mask is off-limits to the series, as that didn’t show up until the second movie.
What the first movie does give us, however, is that Jason was a boy who drowned in the lake in 1957, so chances are good that we might meet a young, sweet boy before he becomes the walking corpse we see in the original movie.
No news yet on when the series will go into production, much less make its way to Peacock.
