Everything We Know About Crystal Lake

On Halloween of 2022, it was announced that Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller would be developing a Friday the 13th series called Crystal Lake for A24 and the Peacock streaming service… but things have turned out to be more complicated than expected. First, the lengthy writers strike slowed down the progress of the show, then Fuller got the boot and was replaced. It remains to be seen when Crystal Lake will be going into production, but since Friday the 13th has come back around on the calendar, we thought this would be a good time for us to share Everything We Know About Crystal Lake!

FIRST SHOWRUNNER

As mentioned, Bryan Fuller was steering this ship when it was first announced, and it nearly started filming with him (and his frequent collaborator Jim Danger Gray) at the helm. Production was set to begin on July 22nd, with filming to last for seven to eight months. Charlize Theron was being considered for the role of Pamela Voorhees, Claire Danes was offered the role and turned it down, Vincenzo Natali (Cube) and Kimberly Peirce (Boys Don’t Cry) were on board to direct episodes. Peacock had provided a budget of $85 million for the first season, which was set to consist of eight episodes, and a $300,000 deposit had been placed on soundstages in Canada… then A24 decided to “go a different way” with the material, moving ahead with Crystal Lake without the involvement of Bryan Fuller. So for right now, it could be said that we don’t know anything about what Crystal Lake will be. We only have an idea of what the Fuller version would have been. That information follows, with an update on the new showrunner at the bottom of this article.

Why did Fuller lose the job? The Wrap tried to get to the bottom of the problems, unearthing talk of unpaid writers, inexperienced executives, and questionable bookkeeping. One source said that A24 didn’t feel confident in the vision Fuller and Gray had for the show and had to pull the plug. Another source said, “It felt like everybody on the Bryan/Jim side were trying very hard to make the show. A24 felt like they were doing everything they could to not make the show.” There’s confusion over whether or not Peacock was aware of the decision to fire Fuller and Gray, were directly involved with the decision, or if the order came from one of the top executives at Universal… but whatever the case, they were fired.

Each episode of Crystal Lake was set to have a budget of $9.6 million, but A24 reportedly wanted to cut that in half. Instead, the budget was rising. In a story that The Wrap heard from more than one source, “Inman Young, A24’s production head whose previous credits include projects like The Whale (budget: $3 million) and Waves (budget: $6 million), claimed the show wasn’t just slightly over budget, it was 100% over budget. Several members of the Crystal Lake production team refuted that assertion.” The Wrap found that the show was 4 to 6 million over budget for the entire season.

RIGHTS SITUATION

While the Friday the 13th franchise has been at a standstill in recent years due to a copyright lawsuit between original Friday the 13th producer/director Sean S. Cunningham and screenwriter Victor Miller, that lawsuit has come to an end. Miller has been awarded the copyright to the 1980 classic within the United States (as well as non-exclusive foreign rights), and to get this TV show rolling he has teamed up with his lawyer Marc Toberoff and Rob Barsamian – an investor in the original Friday the 13th who has a stake in the rest of the franchise. Due to the involvement of both Miller and Barsamian, the makers of Crystal Lake will be able to use anything they want from the existing Friday the 13th franchise. From Mrs. Voorhees to every variation of Jason Voorhees, it’s all fair game.

As Fuller told Fangoria, “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. (laughs) A24 and Marc Toberoff, 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.“

Crystal Lake is part of A24’s goal to expand into more commercial projects, as they were specifically looking for a globally recognized property that could move them into more mainstream territory. So the idea of expanding the Friday the 13th franchise is very appealing to them. According to The Wrap’s article, Fuller’s approach to the material was to make each season a deconstruction of the first four Friday the 13th films. “The series would incorporate lore from several sequels but remix that material in a way similar to Fuller’s Hannibal, which interpolated the Thomas Harris novels for three seasons.” A source close to A24 confirmed, “We had the mask, we had the sequels, we could do whatever we wanted. He had a good path forward, which I did really like.“

CAST

Only one cast member was announced when Fuller was involved, but it’s a name Friday the 13th fans will be familiar with. Adrienne King, who played final girl Alice Hardy in the original film (and returned for the opening sequence of Friday the 13th Part 2, where she was killed off) will have a recurring role on Crystal Lake. It has not been revealed who King would be playing on the show, or if she’ll still be involved now that Fuller has moved on.

Fridaythe13thFranchise teased that there would be “big surprises coming for actors involved as well as who will be portraying certain characters“. We do know that Fuller met up with Friday the 13th (1980) and Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter FX artist Tom Savini, but we don’t know what was discussed during that meeting.

WRITERS

When Fuller was showrunner, he was writing episodes of the show. He also revealed that Scream writer Kevin Williamson would be scripting an episode, which Williamson later described as an hour-long chase episode… and we learned that the chase sequence would be “set entirely on a frozen Crystal Lake, with the summer camp’s cabins trapped under snow drifts.” Fuller gathered a group of writers for what would usually be called a “writers room”, but for some reason it couldn’t legally be called that in this situation. Instead, it was called a “think tank” and these writers were brought together to brainstorm ideas for the show over the course of six weeks. In this think tank were Fuller’s “three lieutenants”, who have worked with him on previous shows like Hannibal, Pushing Daisies, and American Gods, as well as Tommy Pico, who is on the Reservation Dogs staff; Tananarive Due, who has written multiple novels over the last thirty years and executive produced Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror; and Steven Barnes, who is also an author and has also contributed scripts to shows like Stargate SG-1, The Outer Limits, and the ’80s version of The Twilight Zone. There were others in the think tank, but their names haven’t been revealed.

On Barnes and Due’s podcast Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!, Barnes said the work they did in the “think tank” was “The weaving together of a dozen different threads, the epitome of the plotter technique“… that being used to describe the approach of completely plotting out a story before writing it. “To write without any sense of an outline is diametrically opposed to what was happening in that room.” Every idea was broken down with meticulous detail.

Due was awed that “an entire room of very, very high level and smart storytellers can swim in the same direction and do so peacefully, and then if the showrunner says, ‘Eh, I don’t like that direction,’ then bam! They’re all swimming in another direction.” The goal in the room was to “integrate with the mastermind”, the mastermind being Fuller in this case. “You’re not in charge, it’s not your story, you are in service to the mastermind, in service to the showrunner.”

Barnes pointed out that the showrunner is then “in service to the money people who are actually paying for all of this, so he needs to able to communicate to the writers and keep a group of people on track, but also be able to understand how they would be able to produce this and comfort the money people that their money is being spent well.“

Apparently traditional writers rooms last for much longer, something like thirteen weeks. But Due and her collaborators were told “this room was moving very, very fast. That we broke the number of episodes we had in six weeks, whereas some rooms would have only broken one episode in six weeks.” They said they were able to work at that speed and figure out the episodes so quickly because of the “extraordinary leadership” of Fuller.

Williamson said the script Fuller wrote for the pilot episode “was so beautifully realized. A gorgeous portait of a mother unraveling in her grief. Not to mention bloody horrific!” Cube director Vincenzo Natali, who worked with Fuller on Hannibal, added that Fuller’s Crystal Lake would be “another Hannibal-level reinvention that was simultaneously beautiful, sad, poetic, funny and horrifying.” We don’t know if any scripts that were written under the guidance of Fuller will be used for the final version of the show.

MUSIC

Harry Manfredini created the memorable scores for most of the Friday the 13th films – including the iconic “Ki ki ki ma ma ma” sound effect. Other composers took over for Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Freddy vs. Jason, and the 2009 Friday the 13th. Fuller planned for there to be two musical options to choose from when fans watch Crystal Lake on Peacock: a classic Harry Manfredini score and a modern score.

“PRE-REMAKE-UEL”

When Crystal Lake was first announced, it was described in news reports as a “prequel” to the films. That’s not a term Fuller would use, and when asked about it he said it was a “pre-remake-uel”… whatever that may mean. During a later public appearance, he said, “We’re honestly going to be covering it all. The series is covering the life and times of these two characters” (presumably he’s referring to Pamela Voorhees and Jason Voorhees there!) The plan was that we would see “many familiar manifestations of Jason” throughout the series while revisiting Camp Crystal Lake.

Fuller also said the Crystal Lake series would be appropriately murderous, probably “dropping bodies every episode”. Much like Hannibal, the show would have a distinctive look.

MULTIPLE SEASONS

Peacock has given Crystal Lake a full-season commitment with a penalty if they don’t do a season 2, so it’s basically a two season commitment. Thinking ahead, Fuller mapped out four seasons of the show. When the show was announced, Fuller provided the following statement: “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.“

NEW SHOWRUNNER

Despite running into problems on Crystal Lake, A24 is still committed to making the show, which is said to be very important to Peacock. A source close to A24, lawyer Marc Toberoff, and a source close to NBCUniversal all confirmed that Crystal Lake is still moving forward. With Fuller removed from the job, it just needed to find a new showrunner – one A24 would be confident going into production with. It remains to be seen if they will use the original Fuller scripts and outlines, or start over completely. Nick Antosca – a co-producer on Hannibal and an executive producer on Chucky – was one of the contenders for the showrunner job, but it was believed that Antosca (who wrote the screenplay for an unmade Friday the 13th reboot back in 2015) would scrap Fuller’s work and rebuild Crystal Lake from the ground up if he signed on.

After a three month search, the showrunner job ended up going to Brad Caleb Kane, who also serves as co-showrunner and executive producer of It: Welcome to Derry, the It prequel series that’s coming to HBO next year. In addition to showrunner, Kane will be credited as creator, writer, and executive producer of Crystal Lake.

Kane hasn’t said whether or not he has any intention of salvaging elements from the Fuller scripts, but he did provide the following statement: “From the moment I watched Jason Voorhees squeeze a guy’s eyeball out of its socket (in glorious 3D!) at the tender age of 8 years old, I knew my creative path was someday destined to converge with The Man Behind The Mask. Nothing defined my childhood more than growing up in the golden age of the slasher flick, and nothing’s defined the genre more than Friday the 13th. I couldn’t be more excited for the opportunity to contribute a chapter to this iconic franchise, particularly with such fearless partners as Peacock and A24.“

Now, we wait to find out what Kane is going to do with this project now that it’s in his hands. On December 13th, Kane took to Instagram, to write, “Wish I could give a more substantial update but mum’s the word. Suffice it to say the story’s been broken, scripts have been and are being written and the goal is to give the fans (including myself) a tense, scary, bloody and satisfying ride that’s well worth the wait. More news to come in the new year. Unless, y’know… we’re all doomed.“

That’s everything we know about Crystal Lake at this point – but as more details are revealed, we’ll be sharing the news with you here on JoBlo and Arrow in the Head!