Could there be more trouble for Jason Voorhees? Not all seems rosy with A24 and Brian Fuller’s Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake.
First announced in 2022, Crystal Lake was set to take place before the events of the film series and was being executive-produced by Hannibal’s Brian Fuller and being made for Peacock.
However, Jeff Sneider reported that A24 had pulled the plug on the show. The only upside is that it’s unclear whether this is permanent or temporary.
Friday the 13th Prequel Dead and Buried?
”I’m hearing that A24 has pulled the plug on Crystal Lake, its planned Peacock series based on the Friday the 13th franchise featuring masked killer Jason Voorhees,” Wrote Sneider for his The InSneider blog.
”It’s unclear whether this is a permanent decision or a temporary one, as A24 had no comment. Perhaps Peacock will help the trades shed more light on this project, which was announced back in 2022.”
Crystal Lake sounded like an ideal Friday the 13th show, with apparently no restrictions on what could and couldn’t be used despite the legal split over the IP that has prevented new films or shows from being made. Brian Fuller previously revealed just what they could do with the show.
“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,” Fuller joked. “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.”
Fuller also claimed it was ”Less of a prequel series and more of “a pre-remake-uel series,” hinting at something that dove into adult Jason’s murderous antics anew.
The legal tangle has meant we have not seen a new Friday the 13th film in 15 years, with 2009’s remake being the last one, with Jason X the last canon solo film in 2001, and 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason being the last canon screen appearance of Jason Voorhees.
A multiplayer video game and a puzzle game were made more recently. Still, they also notoriously succumbed to the aforementioned legal issues, with Friday the 13th: The Game unable to add any new Friday the 13th content after launch, leading to its demise.
Hopefully, this is just a setback rather than another stumbling block in a bit of a cursed run for the famous slasher franchise.
