After Sixteen Years, Friday the 13th Fans Finally Get Some Good News (And 2026 Could Be Huge)

Friday, February 13th, 2009, was the last time that Jason Voorhees stalked the woods of Camp Crystal Lake on the big screen in a new Friday the 13th movie. In the time since then, the series was largely stuck in legal limbo as a lawsuit was carried out to determine the true ownership of the rights to the film. The sixteen years since the last movie have sadly seen the franchise fall out of the public conciousness while other horror mainstays have seen a huge resurgance; Halloween for instance was able to not only beat Friday the 13th to releasing its 13th feature film but also debut a reboot that became the highest grossing slasher movie of all time, and that’s without even getting into the return of Scream and others.

The good news for fans is that this summer, a deal was finally struck, and the reveal of Jason Universe confirmed that plans for the series were finally on the fast track. In addition to the series delivering new merch (and Jason starring in a new ad campaign) work could finally begin in earnest on a new Friday the 13th movie, in addition to the long-in-the-works TV series that had been seemingly stuck in development hell. Now, new updates have arrived on both projects, so fans should brace for the return of that iconic machete.

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The upcoming Crystal Lake TV series, which is set to arrive on Peacock and features Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother, got a major tease from its creator and showrunner, Brad Caleb Kane. Speaking with EW, Kane revealed that his inspirations for the series may surprise fans as he took his cues not only from slasher movies, but the specific climate in the 1970s that was happening around the production of the original Friday the 13th and right before it, namely, an intense paranoia and “mistrust-of-institutions era.”

“In many ways, it’s a psychological thriller. It’s a paranoid ’70s thriller,” Kane revealed. “It has all of the DNA of a slasher without quite being a slasher. There are rivers of blood in the show. There are very, I think, ingenious kill sequences and deaths and murders, but it’s all done in service of character and theme and place and time.”

On the flip side, filmmaker Mike P. Nelson, who helmed the “Sweet Revenge” ad with Jason at the center and directed the upcoming Silent Night, Deadly Night reboot, has confirmed that a new movie is absolutely happening, noting that he has thrown his hat in the ring to bring it to life.

“They are working on it, that I can promise you, because I’ve heard of it and because I have that direct communication with them, it’s there,” Nelson told SlashFilm. “So that’s really happening. And yes, they have reached out [to me about it]. As have other people. I can’t say too much, but I will say that I have given my two cents, I have given them my take, and right now it’s in their court and we’ll go from there.”

No timeline has been given on either Crystal Lake or the upcoming Friday the 13th feature film, but it’s not too far out of the realm of possibility to consider that 2026 could be a big year for the franchise. Next year will actually see THREE months with a Friday the 13th, with the unlucky day happening in February, March, and November, the first time this has happened since 2015. It’s perhaps too much to hope that Crystal Lake will be ready for the first of those two, but the potential exists for announcements about either project to be made on those dates. Fans can finally hope for that, at least, after spending more than a decade waiting.