By MICHAEL GINGOLD
The long-running franchise’s original final girl is psyched about how the latest revival is proceeding.
Adrienne King, who played the surviving Alice in the original FRIDAY THE 13TH (only to be dispatched at the beginning of FRIDAY PART 2) revealed earlier this year that she’ll have a role in Peacock’s upcoming series CRYSTAL LAKE. And this past weekend, at New Jersey’s Monster Mania convention, she gave fans assembled for a FRIDAY Final Girls panel (also including PART 2’s Amy Steel, THE FINAL CHAPTER’s Kimberly Beck and A NEW BEGINNING’s Melanie Kinnaman) some very positive words about the show.
“Although I signed an NDA, so I can’t give you any specifics,” she began, “I can share with you that I was invited to a writers’ meeting. Never, ever in my life have I been invited to a writers’ meeting. When I got there, there were 10 writers at a round table, the showrunner and another showrunner–I didn’t know you could have two showrunners on the same show, but that must be a big show, right?–and the producer. And then there was a screen, and we were Zooming with a London writer, and they insisted that I sit at the head of the table. How sweet is that, having been dissed by every other producer on a FRIDAY project? It was very, very nice.
“I got pitched the first three episodes,” she continued, “and what I can tell you is, they want you to be happy. They are big fans of FRIDAY THE 13TH; every single writer there was, like, a fanboy or fangirl, and they knew more about the movies than I did, some of them. It was just so wonderful to hear this new enthusiasm about something that we all love and care about, and they felt the same way. They felt, ‘Oh my God, we finally get a chance to continue, and to bring the legacy alive and make it what the fans have been begging for.’ So all I can tell you is, give it a chance ’cause you’re gonna love it, and they really care.”
Bryan Fuller (HANNIBAL) is a writer and showrunner on CRYSTAL LAKE, described as an “expanded prequel” that presumably goes back to the titular locale to explore the origin story of Jason and Mrs. Voorhees. Fuller is also an executive producer, along with original FRIDAY scripter Victor Miller, Marc Toberoff, Rob Barsamian and genre specialist A24, the project’s home studio. It was also revealed recently that SCREAM veteran Kevin Williamson is scripting an episode. Plot details and directors have yet to be revealed, though King did note, “I do believe that they’re probably going to be shooting in Canada, because of taxes, and it’s really cold and it rains [laughs],” a reference to her and the other FRIDAY actresses’ recollections of uncomfortable weather conditions on their respective shoots. “But I’m really looking forward to it.” Stay tuned for further info on CRYSTAL LAKE as we find it out!
