Friday the 13th Series Will Feature "Many Familiar" Versions of Jason

Word officially broke on Halloween that the Friday the 13th franchise was finally coming back from the dead but with a TV series instead of a new feature film. Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller is set to executive produce and showrun the series, titled Crystal Lake, which has a series order from Peacock. Due to the previously reported on legal troubles with the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, many were concerned that the show would only be able to work with a limited amount of details from the 11 feature films in the main series. Lucky for us, Fuller is here to correct the record.

Speaking with Fangoria in a new interview, Fuller teased that "everything" from the feature films is on the table and able to be used, meaning grown-up, hockey mask-wearing Jason Voorhees can appear and not just the child version of the slasher killer. Fuller added, "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."

He continued, "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 opened up on the nature of the show's nature as a prequel to the movies or its own thing with the creator falling it "less a prequel series" and rather his own portmanteau, "pre-remake-uel series." Naturally the potential for Jason to appear was also addressed, with Fuller noting viewers "will see many familiar manifestations of Jason." Fans should also be excited by the fact that the series will have a big budget and basically already has a season two renewal.

"One of the things that is super exciting and one of the many reasons that we went with Peacock is that they blew every other competitor out of the water," Fuller revealed. "There was a bidding war on this, and they came in strong and gave us a full-season commitment with a huge penalty if we don't do a second season. 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."

Finally, Fuller teased that the series would be "pretty murderous" and he thinks they'll be "dropping bodies every episode." Fuller is set to executive produce the series. A24, Marc Toberoff, Victor Miller and Rob Barsamian will also executive produce.

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