Why The Friday The 13th Prequel Series Is Essentially Guaranteed To Run For Two Seasons
When the "Friday the 13th" prequel series "Crystal Lake" was announced yesterday, there were a lot of questions that needed to be answered. Would the clearing of franchise rights allow Jason to appear? Is the series going to center around his mother, Pamela? Why exactly is A24 involved in the show? While some of these questions will likely be answered as development on the project continues, fans will likely have to wait for a while before others will be put to rest.
What we do know is that "Crystal Lake" won't be a one-and-done deal, at least not according to showrunner Bryan Fuller. In an exclusive interview with Fangoria, the man responsible for shows like "Pushing Daisies" and "Hannibal" shed a little light on his newest project, including how it ended up at Peacock of all places.
"They blew every other competitor out of the water," he explained. "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]."
He did go on to clarify that, as of right now, there's only one season in the works. Fuller is known to exaggerate his thoughts and comments, so we should probably take things with a grain of salt with that penalty reveal. However, it certainly sounds like Peacock is hoping that Camp Crystal Lake will be open for more than one season.
Now, about that budget...
There's not a ton that you need to do to replicate the sights and sounds of Camp Crystal Lake. Do you have a large plot of land in the countryside with a lake attached? Congratulations! You've got your newest location of Camp Crystal Lake. After all, the first film was shot at an active Boy Scout camp on a budget of $550,000, so with the right location and set designers, it shouldn't be too difficult in theory to make the world of "Friday the 13th" come back alive.
However, it sounds like this series could be more than just a simple campground massacre. According to Fuller, the series is going to cost money. A lot of money.
"We're going to have roughly five times the per-episode budget that we had on 'Hannibal,'" he told Fangoria. While he didn't go any deeper into the planned budget, it's worth noting that "Hannibal" was an aesthetically beautiful show that cost anywhere from $185,000 to $750,000 per episode in licensing fees alone (via Entertainment Weekly). If they want to spend five times more money on "Crystal Lake" than "Hannibal," they could be spending upwards of $3.75 million for each episode. A budget like that suggests that Peacock and A24 must be extremely confident in the series' success.
Of course, we won't know how exactly it will look or what its future will be until we get to see it for ourselves. "Crystal Lake" is still very deep into pre-production, but we're hoping more news continues to come out about it.