Horror has long been more of a movie than a TV thing. The genre works best — and makes the most money — with a big crowd in a darkened theater. But it’s been making in-roads to the small screen. Mike Flanagan has made a killing with streaming series like The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, while Bryan Fuller was miraculously able to bring Hannibal Lecter to NBC prime time. Speaking of, Fuller has similar-but-different plans for another horror icon.
As per Variety, Fuller got a straight-to-series order from Peacock to make Crystal Lake, an “expanded prequel” series for Friday the 13th, the slasher franchise born out of the success of the original Halloween. Details are currently being kept close to the vest, but the words “expanded prequel” suggest that it won’t be a straight origin story for the series’ resident baddie Jason Voorhees. Indeed, Jason isn’t even the killer in the 1980 original; it’s his mother, Pamela, who starts gruesomely offering randy teens to avenge the negligent death of her son.
This isn’t the first time Friday the 13th has headed for television. Starting in 1987, a show of the same name played syndication for three seasons. Oddly, Jason never made an appearance. Instead, each episode dealt with some fantastical horror story. This one clearly won’t take that route.
The last time Voorhees made a new appearance on any screen was in the 2009 reboot, produced by Michael Bay. The film was a hit but it didn’t spawn a new run of sequels.
Fuller’s other credits are a diverse lot, including Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, American Gods, and Star Trek: Discovery. A fairly eccentric TV man, he’ll likely take a franchise prone to paint-by-numbers repetition in some goofball directions.
(Via Variety)