Franchise slasher well known to fans of the genre, Friday the 13th is back, but this time on TV with Crystal Lake, a TV series that serves as a prequel to the very first film in the saga and stars Linda Cardellini. The actress portrays Pamela Voorhees, mother of the infamous Crystal Lake killer, who in this stage of the story is a grieving single mother for the tragic loss of her son Jason, who drowned in the town’s lake a year earlier. Released for streaming in Italy on HBO Max, the prequel TV series is the creation of Brad Caleb Kane, and it was precisely him who explained the one rule he set for himself when approaching the project.
Crystal Lake, the showrunner reveals the single rule he followed to adapt the prequel to the broader Friday the 13th film franchise
Based on the popular horror saga led by Jason Voorhees, Crystal Lake is a prequel story that traces the character’s origins back to his mother, Pamela, portrayed in this instance by Linda Cardellini. The series had to face the elephant in the room, namely Pamela Voorhees, who turned out to be the actual killer in the first film. The franchise, however, has always been associated with his son Jason, and it has always been that way, which is why the creator of Crystal Lake preferred not to dwell too much on the various changes: “The saga is rather incoherent in terms of canon and obviously from the first to the second film, given the enormous success of the first, they rewrote the story. They simply decided that it was Jason in the woods for all that time. So there were no limits on what I could do,” the showrunner confessed to SlashFilm.
For this reason, Brad Caleb Kane chose to establish a rule: “I approach every show and project I work on without rules. I don’t like rules, but the only one I chose to follow in this case was that it had to be fun. These films were a fun pastime and, in the end, I wanted the series to be pure entertainment, I wanted it to be an unbridled experience.”
Besides Linda Cardellini, the cast also includes William Catlett who plays Levon Brooks, Devin Kessler as Briana Brooks, Cameron Scoggins as Dorf, and Gwendolyn Sundstrom as Grace. Jason Voorhees in this instance takes the form of Callum Vinson. The cast also features Danielle Kotch and Phoenix Parnevik who portray Claudette and Barry, the same characters introduced in Friday the 13th as the first victims at Camp Crystal Lake. In this respect, the showrunner added: “We had to touch upon certain points of the films that were important to me as a fan. If we introduce characters like Barry and Claudette and we find ourselves in the period when these murders occurred, we need to at least show them.”
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