Friday the 13ish

[Skanky Vamp]

from giz

It’s a Halloween miracle: Friday the 13th is coming back. Sort of.
Peacock just announced a straight-to-series order for a new show called Crystal Lake, which is described as a “Friday the 13th expanded prequel series.” Bryan Fuller, best known for his work on Hannibal, will be running the show for A24 and the streamer.
Variety reports that due to the complex, ongoing legal battle over the franchise, this show will not be able to use any of the iconographies from the films that came out after the original Friday the 13th.

A Friday the 13th prequel featuring Jason's mom sounds like it might not really hit the mark. What say you?

 

[Plasma]

I say two things

First off I have faith in Fuller. Hannibal was a Red Dragon prequel that very much worked and expanded on all of these characters in a wonderful way whilst doing its own thing.

Secondly I don’t really care how good or bad it ends up being. I’m just glad Friday is doing SOMETHING. The legal nightmare that this franchise has become is something that won’t get sorted out until all but a single rights holder all fall stone dead, and it’s unlikely that we’ll see a Friday movie anytime soon as as a result. This is at least something to work with, especially for those who are fans of the franchise.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Hannibal

His first season of American Gods was pretty good as well but both Hannibal and American Gods had the original character(s) from which to draw. This, in my opinion, would be akin to making Hannibal without Hannibal.

It'll be interesting to see how they work out the kinks and what the show is and turns into. Calling it Crystal Lake I think it might distance itself from the main 13th mythos and look at the lake's history.

 

[Mr Trick]

Its a bit of a weird idea for a franchise which is fun to the core fanbase as fun pulpy slasher fare. A lot will depend on tone. From what I've seen of Hannibal it was pretty hammy and didn't take itself too seriously. Fuller does have a decent track record so I will keep an open mind.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

update from bloody disgusting

Variety added an interesting wrinkle to their “Crystal Lake” story late last night, noting that Rob Barsamian AND Victor Miller are executive producing the Peacock series. Barsamian is the man behind the company Horror, Inc., the rights holders of the Friday the 13th elements that Victor Miller doesn’t own. The rights we assumed only Cunningham had control of.

According to Variety’s aforementioned update, this means that the “Crystal Lake” series now “has access to all of the other elements from the films,” suggesting that the combined forces of Victor Miller and Rob Barsamian will allow the Peacock series to use anything it wants to. That includes locations and characters, notably adult Jason Voorhees and his hockey mask.

This updated information has been corroborated by Bloody Disgusting’s sources, as of this writing, and also touched upon by Friday the 13th Part III star/entertainment lawyer Larry Zerner, who has long been our main source of intel on the franchise’s messy legal troubles.

Zerner tweeted last night, “A little legal info on the TV deal (Reminder: I don’t represent Victor Miller or Horror, Inc.). The TV show is being produced by both Victor AND Horror, Inc. Do you see in the article where it says that Victor and Rob Barsamian will exec. produce.”

He adds, “Rob IS Horror Inc. (not Sean).”

Zerner’s tweet suggests, much like Variety’s report, that Sean Cunningham isn’t the decision-maker in this one as we thought, but rather Rob Barsamian holds the keys to Crystal Lake.

Long story short? As far as we can tell, Peacock’s “Crystal Lake” can do whatever it wants with the Friday franchise, a dream for fans who have been waiting 13 YEARS for Jason Voorhees to return to the screen. We still have no idea what form the series will take, or which elements it even desires to use, but we’ll of course keep you updated as we continue to learn more.

 

[thetopher]

Excited for this. Recently saw the excellent 'Never Hike Alone' short on YouTube and seems like there's lots of potential to 'fill in the gaps' in the franchise and play around with some new ideas regarding Crystal Lake.
But really anything Jason related I'm here for it, I even thought the 2009 reboot/re-imagining was one of the better efforts of that type.

 

[Skanky Vamp]

Update from Fuller:

"As a streaming series, we have the rights to do everything underneath the Friday the 13th umbrella,” he said. “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.

"There was a bidding war on this, and [Peacock] came in strong and gave us a full-season commitment with a huge penalty if we don’t do a second season,” he said. “So it’s kind of a two-season commitment [laughs], but really just the first-season commitment. We’re going to have roughly five times the per-episode budget that we had on Hannibal.

Okay. This could be interesting.