Filming recently wrapped on the upcoming Friday the 13th prequel television series “Crystal Lake” from A24, which will be the franchise’s first official installment in almost twenty years when it premieres on Peacock sometime next year. And we’re in good hands with this one, as showrunner Brad Caleb Kane is also the co-showrunner of HBO’s “IT: Welcome to Derry.”
What can we expect from “Crystal Lake”? Brad Caleb Kane tells Entertainment Weekly in a brand new interview, “In many ways, it’s a psychological thriller. It’s a paranoid ’70s thriller.”
He continues, “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.”
“I tried to think about Crystal Lake and a Friday the 13th prequel as, ‘What era did the first movie come out of?’ It came out of the paranoid ’70s thriller era,” Caleb Kane goes on to explain. “It came out of the mistrust-of-institutions era. It came out of the women’s lib era, the National Organization for Women era, this consciousness-raising awakening era in America. I wanted to go and play with all of those themes.”
Brad Caleb Kane also teases that star Linda Cardellini, who plays Jason’s mother Pamela Voorhees in the series, is going to “shock and surprise a lot of people” with her performance.
He explains in his chat with EW, “I think [Linda Cardellini’s] gonna get a lot of attention for this role. She’s inconceivably brilliant in it. I can’t really say any more.”
Callum Vinson is playing a young Jason Voorhees in the series, with Linda Cardellini starring as Mrs. Voorhees. The series will serve as an expanded prequel to the 1980 slasher.
“Crystal Lake” also stars William Catlett (A Thousand and One, Constellation), Devin Kessler (Godfather of Harlem), Cameron Scoggins (Shades of Blue, Nashville) and Gwendolyn Sundstrom. Nick Cordileone is Crazy Ralph, Danielle Kotch is Claudette, and Phoenix Parnevik is Barry, all characters from the original Friday the 13th movie.
Nancy Nagrant will play Kay Christy, a relative of Steve Christy from Friday the 13th (1980), while Joy Suprano (Fleishman is in Trouble, Best Foot Forward) will also star.
The eight-episode series is set to be directed by Michael Lennox (“Derry Girls”), Celine Held & Logan George (Caddo Lake), and Quyen Tran (“The Pitt”).
Linda Cardellini in ‘The Curse of La Llorona’