On Halloween of 2022, it was announced that original Friday the 13th screenwriter Victor Miller – fresh off winning the U.S. copyright to the 1980 film after a lawsuit that stretched on for years – was teaming up with his lawyer Marc Toberoff, franchise rights holder Rob Barsamian, production company A24, the Peacock streaming service, and showrunner Bryan Fuller (whose credits include Hannibal and Pushing Daisies) to develop a new Friday the 13th streaming series called Crystal Lake. Things were moving ahead at a good pace, filming was expected to begin in Canada this July, but then the project hit a speed bump at the end of April with the firing of Fuller and his frequent collaborator Jim Danger Gray. They have since been replaced by new showrunner Brad Caleb Kane, who also serves as co-showrunner and executive producer of It: Welcome to Derry, the It prequel series that’s coming to HBO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… and while we wait to hear what Kane is going to do with the show, original Friday the 13th producer and director Sean S. Cunningham, who was Miller’s opponent in that long copyright court battle, has revealed what he has heard about Crystal Lake.
During an appearance at Silver Scream Con in Worcester, Massachusetts, Cunningham said (with thanks to our friends at Bloody Disgusting for the transcription), “Last I heard, they’re talking about shooting (Crystal Lake) in Australia at the end of this year and releasing on Halloween 2025. But I’ve heard versions of that story for so long, I don’t put a lot of credibility into it. There’s just so many things that can go sideways.” We have to keep in mind that Cunningham is not involved with Crystal Lake, but if that information is accurate, it’s interesting to hear that production might take place in Australia rather than Canada. A24 was looking to lower the cost of the show; each episode of Crystal Lake (which would have an eight episode first season) was set to have a budget of $9.6 million, but A24 reportedly wanted to cut that in half. Maybe, assuming Cunningham has heard correctly, Australia offered them better incentives.
Cunningham went on to explain how the Friday the 13th franchise got to its current state: “Some time ago, the rights expired on the original script, so then there became doubt about who owns what after 35 years. That was being worked out by lawyers, and we were trying to figure out what we were going to do. We were trying to do a TV series, which we actually got pretty far down the road on. I was very happy with that. I thought it was going to be a lot of fun, and then the rights thing blew up and the TV series got postponed, and then the pandemic arrived. Finally, A24 decided that they would hook up with Peacock and do a Friday the 13th TV series.” According to Cunningham, Fuller was fired from Crystal Lake because his vision for the show was “too dark,” which is a different explanation than we had previously heard. When The Wrap tried to get to the bottom of the problems, they unearthed talk of unpaid writers, inexperienced executives, and questionable bookkeeping.
As Cunningham mentioned, he was developing a Friday the 13th TV series called Crystal Lake Chronicles, which was set up at The CW, several years ago. He described one sequence they had in mind for the scrapped show: “A bunch of kids – 8, 9 years old – are out on the ice playing peewee hockey. One kid does a breakaway, skates down, and who’s in the net but Jason. He tries to shoot, Jason blocks it. The kid who’s trailing scores the goal, and they go, ‘Yay!’ And Jason’s pissed. He starts chopping at the kids and the ice starts to crack, and then we cut out of that. The explanation would be that kids in the high school had shot this video as a joke, and it was going viral on the internet. But I thought it was so silly and so much fun. I wish we’d gotten a chance to shoot it.“
Crystal Lake Chronicles was abandoned long ago, but Crystal Lake is still moving forward under the guidance of Brad Caleb Kane. Will it be filming in Australia, like Cunningham said? Hopefully we’ll know for sure before much longer.