As we all know, the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise is currently in limbo while the first film's director/producer Sean S. Cunningham and screenwriter Victor Miller continue their court battle over the U.S. copyright to that original film. But just a few years ago, while Paramount was developing a new FRIDAY THE 13TH movie that they ultimately decided not to make, Cunningham was shopping around a Friday the 13th TV series called Crystal Lake Chronicles that had a shot at airing on the CW at one time.
Cunningham explained that the series would take this approach:
Crystal Lake is a town that really exists, and a long time ago they had a serial killer named Jason Voorhees, and then some Hollywood creep comes out and makes this exploitation horror movie called FRIDAY THE 13TH. And then they make another one, and another one, and it just crushes the town. The town becomes the place that “Jason built.” And the stuff that happened, they know what really happened. The rest is Hollywood lore. There are people there that lived through it, and they’ll tell you what really happened.
And so, what you can do is set up Crystal Lake as, more or less, like the town in JAWS, Amity Island. You have the town with all its prime movers in the town, but the town is located in an area that would allow Jason to exist in whatever form. But other things as well. I would describe it as a place where if THE X-FILES’ Mulder and Scully wandered into this county, they never would have left! There’s so much weird shit going on!"
And now we have an idea of what Jason Voorhees could have looked like on this show. The folks at Fridaythe13thFranchise.com have gotten their hands on a ton of images that show different designs for Jason, his hockey mask, and his machete.
When the show was first announced, it was said that Bill Basso and Jordu Schell were writing a story that would
re-imagine Jason in multiple time periods.
I've heard that it would have featured a young Jason, an '80s-era Jason, and a modern day old Jason, and you can see that reflected in the designs.
These things were created by Sota FX when they were pitching to get the jobs for both the series and the Paramount project, so you can get an idea of what they might have brought to the film as well. It's not clear if they were hired to work on the abandoned film, but they were hired to craft the FX for the show.
I've included some cool images below. To see the whole batch, click over to Fridaythe13thFranchise.com.