Television producer and writer Bryan Fuller has revealed to what extent he can use established characters and settings in his Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake. The Friday the 13th franchise has had a rocky history after the release of Jason X, the 10th film, in 2002. While Jason crossed over with A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Freddy Krueger in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, the following solo outings for Voorhees have seen mixed to negative reception. These include a Friday the 13th reboot film in 2009 and a survival horror video game in 2017, neither of which led to a revitalization of the franchise.
Despite past failures to engage a modern audience with Friday the 13th, Fuller and A24 are set to bring the franchise back to life through a prequel television series titled Crystal Lake. Spearheaded by Fuller – known for creating shows like Pushing Daisies and Hannibal – the series will air on Peacock, taking place before the events of the Jason-led slasher films the franchise is known for. The series promises a new perspective on the Friday the 13th franchise while setting the story at Camp Crystal Lake, ensuring a mix of new and old for fans of the franchise.
In an interview with Fangoria, Fuller revealed that Crystal Lake is allowed to use anything that’s shown up in the Friday the 13th franchise so far. He joked that, if they wanted to, they could explore Hell or space, much the same way Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and Jason X did respectively. Check out everything Fuller had to say below:
Everything. We can use everything. We can go to Hell, we can go to space. That’s not to say that we will do those things … although if we do go 10 seasons, I will be lobbying hard to go to space.
(Laughs)
A24 and Marc Toberoff, who is Victor Miller’s lawyer, have beautifully and excruciatingly assembled all of the Friday the 13th rights. As a streaming series, we have the rights to do everything underneath the Friday the 13th umbrella. The movie rights are a completely different thing. They are tied up at New Line and are super, super messy and probably won’t be untangled anytime soon, but as far as us chickens in the television industry, uh, roost, we have access to anything and everything that Friday the 13th has done up until this point.
How Jason X & Goes To Hell Could Impact The Series
While Fuller is clearly joking about Crystal Lake running for 10 seasons to retell Jason’s journeys through Hell and space, ideas from these films could be used to incorporate some of the more fantastical elements of Friday the 13th early in Crystal Lake‘s story. Jason Goes to Hell establishes that a resurrected Jason has taken a worm-like form which he uses to possess other characters while trying to find a way to be permanently reborn. If Crystal Lake were to introduce mystical elements into its story early on, it may be able to justify the admittedly goofy turn the franchise took in the early ’90s by remixing worm-like Jason into something of genuine terror.
Crystal Lake also has the chance to establish elements of Jason X much earlier in the Friday the 13th timeline as well. Jason X sees Jason be cryogenically frozen for hundreds of years at the Crystal Lake Research Facility before being taken onboard the space station Solaris. While Jason X‘s sudden sci-fi turn turned off many viewers, ideas from the film could be used to Crystal Lake to pull it in the opposite direction of mysticism, instead adding science-fiction elements to the story.
Be that as it may, adding mysticism or sci-fi in Crystal Lake from the start could bog down the story Fuller wants to tell. By adding a large swath of mystical or science-fiction plot elements early in the story, the show could become too wrapped up in setting up future seasons to present a compelling narrative. While it’s always possible some goofier ideas from later Friday the 13th films could be reworked in Crystal Lake, the reception to films like Jason Goes to Hell and Jason X may instead act as lessons in where not to take the show.
