Much like Jason Voorhees, the Friday the 13th franchise is rising from the dead. After a series of legal battles, Peacock has ordered Crystal Lake, a Friday the 13th prequel from Bryan Fuller, straight to series.
A24 will produce the upcoming series, which will presumably focus on Camp Crystal Lake, the placid, wooded New Jersey campgound setting for the long-running slasher series, before the events of 1980's Friday the 13th. Fuller, the producer of Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and Star Trek: Discovery, has stated "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. 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."
Series details are being kept under wraps, but the title provides a hint. The opening scenes of Friday the 13th depict the murder of two camp counselors at Cap Crystal Lake in 1958; the movie eventually reveals the murderer was Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer), who did so to avenge her disabled son Jason, who drowned while the counselors were neglecting their duties. The rest of the film concerns the attempted reopening of the camp in the present day, which is foiled by Pamela's homicidal rampage; Jason himself only appears in a shocking dream sequence at the end of the film, rising from the depths of the lake to attack the film's sole surviving protagonist, Alice (Adrienne King).
Pamela Voorhees is dispatched at the end of the first film, but Friday the 13th Part II reveals an adult Jason to be alive, and takes up the family business of stalking and dispatching teenagers. After acquiring his iconic goalie mask in Friday the 13th Part III, he became a modern horror icon, appearing in a string of sequels that saw him killed, resurrected, sent to Hell, turned into a cyborg, and even facing off against Freddy Krueger. The franchise also spawned Friday the 13th: The Series, a Canadian-produced horror TV series that ran from 1987 to 1990; despite the title and a common producer in Frank Mancuso Jr., however, the show concerned a team tracking down a series of cursed antiques, none of which had anything to do with Jason Voorhees.
The franchise has laid fallow since 2009's Platinum Dunes Friday the 13th reboot, due to a long-running legal dispute between Victor Miller, the screenwriter of the original film, and Horror Inc., its producers, over who has ownership of Jason Voorhees. In 2021, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Miller's work was not legally work-for-hire, and thus Miller did own the rights to Jason. As Crystal Lake will be produced by Miller, his copyright attorney Marc Toberoff, and original Friday the 13th producer Rob Barsamian, it appears the parties have come to an agreement over usage of the character.
Stay tuned to Collider for future updates, and stay out of the woods...