One of the most famous slasher franchises around is coming back, but without its iconic killer. Friday the 13th is getting a prequel series at Peacock, which will be written and showrun by Bryan Fuller, called Crystal Lake.
The series will take place at some point before the first movie, but won’t feature Jason or his trademark hockey mask thanks to the ongoing legal battle over the franchise. Essentially, thanks to some strange contracts, and a few very protracted court battles, the rights to the series are split between two separate people, one who owns the first movie, and another who owns the sequels.
But, as Scream’s Ghostface wants us to remember, Jason wasn’t the killer in the first movie — his mom was. So while we could certainly get a Mrs. Voorhees in the prequel series, don’t expect Jason himself to be showing up or doing any killing. That being said, the idea of a summer camp that’s frequently stalked by killers of one Voorhees variety or another is still probably pretty fertile ground for a horror series.
Friday the 13th is far from the first slasher series to get its own spinoff series, too. In the early 2010s, there were also spinoff and prequel series for Scream, Psycho, and even Bryan Fuller’s own Hannibal. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the series themselves ranged mostly from good to great, which at least makes this new project exciting. In fact, there was even another Friday the 13th show, called Friday the 13th: The Series, which aired in the late ’80s and has been more or less forgotten since.
Fuller is a television veteran creating several shows over the last 20 years including Dead Like Me, Star Trek: Discovery, American Gods, and the aforementioned Hannibal. Also behind Crystal Lake will be A24, which while known for movies is also the studio behind HBO’s Euphoria. There’s no word yet on when Crystal Lake might come out, but it’s likely more than a year away.