{"id":657169,"date":"2026-10-26T02:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-26T02:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/657169\/"},"modified":"2026-10-26T02:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-26T02:20:10","slug":"crystal-lake-showrunner-kane-no-brainer-that-pennywise-beats-jason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/657169\/","title":{"rendered":"Crystal Lake Showrunner Kane: “No-Brainer” That Pennywise Beats Jason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted in: Peacock<\/a>, TV<\/a> | Tagged: Brad Caleb Kane<\/a>, crystal lake<\/a>, peacock<\/a><\/p>\n

Crystal Lake Showrunner Brad Caleb Kane spoke with us about the “Friday the 13th” prequel, expanding the franchise’s universe, and much more.<\/p>\n

Article Summary
\nCrystal Lake showrunner Brad Caleb Kane embraces fan debate, saying the Friday the 13th prequel had to take big swings.
\nKane breaks down Crystal Lake\u2019s 1970s paranoid-horror roots, Pamela\u2019s arc, and why Jason\u2019s father mattered from day one.
\nThe Crystal Lake interview teases season 2 plans, with more Pamela, more Jason, and much more carnage in the woods.
\nKane also compares Crystal Lake and Welcome to Derry, then calls it a no-brainer that Pennywise beats Jason. <\/p>\n

Crystal Lake is now streaming on Peacock, with all eight episodes available. The show has gotten tons of acclaim, though fans have also questioned some of its choices. At the end of the day, we really liked it<\/a>, and this love letter to the franchise should be a top-priority watch for spooky season. We got the chance to talk to showrunner Brad Caleb Kane about the show, how it felt exploring untouched parts of the Friday the 13th mythos, how his time on Welcome to Derry informed his approach to this, how this will affect his approach to Derry season 2, and who he would take in a fight between the two horror icons he has had a hand in molding the last couple of years.<\/p>\n

\"Crystal<\/a>Pictured: Linda Cardellini as Pamela Voorhees \u2014 (Photo by: Peacock)
\nCrystal Lake Interview: Brad Caleb Kane<\/p>\n

BC: Well, congrats on the show. What’s it been like seeing the good and the not-so-good responses?<\/p>\n

Brad Caleb Kane: It’s been great. I love that there’s a discourse. I love how rabid horror fans are. I love how invested fans of this particular franchise are. I don’t think it’s worth doing anything if you’re not gonna take a big swing and try something a little bit different. I don’t think any work of art is worth its salt if it doesn’t take big chances, and big chances divide people. So, I’m all for it. And I respect\u2026I’m not just saying this as a kind of appeasement, but I actually do respect everyone’s opinion; everybody’s opinion is valid. We’ve taken these movies into our hearts. We’ve taken these characters into our hearts. I do too; I’ve lived with this character for 45 years, just as much as anybody else who might feel like I’m not doing right by it. But then there are people who are gonna enter the franchise who would never have touched it through Crystal Lake and fall in love with these characters in a different way. They will go back, and they will see the original movies and maybe have a slightly different perspective on them than longtime fans do. So I’m all for it, I’m for the discourse.<\/p>\n

BC: Yeah, my partner actually is exactly who you’re describing. She does not like slasher movies or anything like that whatsoever, but she was very drawn into the show. By the end, we were staying up until almost 5 AM to finish the series, and she was really into it.<\/p>\n

BCK: Thank you. No, I love to hear that. And you know, I loved hearing fans engage with it, positively or negatively. That feels to me like a valid work of art.<\/p>\n

\"Crystal<\/a>Pictured: William Catlett as Levon \u2014 (Photo by: Matt Infante\/PEACOCK)<\/p>\n

BC: \u00a0There was a little bit that went on behind the scenes before anything went in front of cameras. Walking onto the show, it kind of felt like everybody kind of left the show alone, and some people didn’t even believe it was happening anymore, even though you guys were filming it. Did that take some of the pressure off?<\/p>\n

BCK: No, I didn’t really feel any pressure, even from conception. For me, it’s like I’ve lived with these movies as long as the longest-term fan has lived with the movies. Part 3 in 3D was the first one I saw in theaters when I was eight years old in 1982. I saw every single one of these movies in theaters after that opening weekend. I had the novelizations; I still have the dog-eared novelizations of the books. So, I’m very invested in this franchise. I felt like, if anyone should be doing this franchise, it should be someone who loves it as much as I do. I felt I understood as a long-time fan what the show should be as a prequel and what I wanted it to be. I knew the red meat that I needed to throw to the fans like me to keep them invested, but at the same time it’s television; it’s not a movie, and movies are different. It’s 90 minutes of visceral, cheap thrills; it’s ninety minutes of hack and slash, and we love to see it. But television, you come to for character and emotion and relationships over a longer period of time. So it requires a different kind of storytelling. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that storytelling was there for fans, new fans like your partner and my wife and other people, but also that it had creative kills, that it had gore and viscera, that it had direct recreations from the movies so that long-term fans would get those dopamine hits that I wanted them to have. So I never felt any pressure. I just felt excitement and gratitude.<\/p>\n

BC: Speaking of the novelizations, how soon into the process did you know you were going to give us the backstory on Jason’s father, because that was a choice that I was hoping you were gonna make on the show, and for me, I thought it worked very well.<\/p>\n

BCK: Right away, I mean from conception, from my first pitch, I knew that we were going back to Pam and Elias, and Pam being pregnant. One of the themes that I wanted to explore in the show was the changing America from a time when we really trusted our institutions, our corporations, to the early 70s, when this is set, a time of mistrust of those same institutions. The identity crisis that America was going through mirrored what Pam goes through. So I always knew that I wanted Elias to be part of some sort of corporation that was doing something with reproduction. I knew that Pam would be pulled into that against her knowledge. I knew there would be an aspect of Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives in it because that paranoid body-autonomy thing was a staple of horror at the time. And that’s the decade that these movies came out of. So because we’re doing a prequel, I wanted to go back to those themes.<\/p>\n

\"Crystal<\/a>Danielle Kotch in “Crystal Lake”. Cr: Peacock<\/p>\n

BC: Were you nervous at all about the seventh episode, and did you always know you were gonna set that episode right before the finale? Just from a pacing standpoint, were you a little afraid of not giving enough to the audience before you walloped us at the end?<\/p>\n

BCK: No, I was never nervous about anything. I don’t approach anything that I do in TV or film from a point of view of being nervous, or I’m afraid that this won’t satisfy enough people or this, that, or the other. I think that hampers creativity. I think you have to do, if you’re lucky enough to be in a position to do something like this, the only thing you have to give is your own point of view. And as a long-term fan, I have the knowledge of the movies and I have my point of views. So that’s the only place that I could come at any of this from. For me, it felt like the story should be told in the penultimate episode because you have to build up to it. You want to get the audience invested in these characters fully while creating that paranoid 70s thriller feeling, and it takes time to build that up. And these movies from the 70s that I was sort of marrying the slasher with are a little bit more of a slow burn. And I felt like that’s okay. I felt some of these movies teach us how to watch them. And again, there’s no reason to do it exactly like the Friday the 13th movies do it because you have 12 movies that you can watch that already exist. This is a prequel. This is a different time period. It has Jason and Pam, but from a different time. So it should be its own thing, and that’s how I approached it.<\/p>\n

BC: Yeah, I completely agree with all of that. What is it like adding what I think are going to be some iconic characters to the franchise, like the sheriff and his sister, or this version of Pamela, or the motivational speaker who blew my mind, like his performance was fantastic. What is that feeling, adding to the mythos like that?<\/p>\n

BCK: You know, it’s very exciting, just as it’s exciting to sort of explore legacy characters that went unexplored or existed in the movies just for moments of comic relief or for a specific purpose, like Ralph to be the prophet of doom. Like, that’s kind of his only purpose in those movies. You know? Dorff to be like a funny three-second character exists for very brief comic relief. Since the show is called Crystal Lake, and we’re doing a small-town ensemble essentially, you’re able to explore those great legacy characters that went unexplored in this town and also create new ones that would exist in this time. You would have a small-town police chief. He would have a past. He would be coming from a very specific place and speak to a very specific issue in this place and time, and that’s where he came in. His sister came in speaking to corporate malfeasance and mistrust of institutions as a theme I wanted to explore. Naturally, you would make her a journalist, and there are things to uncover in Crystal Lake. So it all felt like it fed into each other naturally, and it felt great. It was exciting, and I hope people do take these new characters into their hearts and enjoy spending time with them, because there’s more story to tell.<\/p>\n

BC: Yeah, I love all the scenes in the diner with all the Crystal Lake citizens just kind of just chatting with each other about things that are going on. I love stuff like that, so I really appreciated that touch.<\/p>\n

BCK: That’s awesome, I’m glad. Those are some of the most fun scenes to write because it’s just pure character. It’s like a Greek chorus. That’s your Greek chorus and everything that’s going on in the town. So it’s fun.<\/p>\n

BC:\u00a0 If you were blessed enough to get a season two, how much further into exploring the town’s citizens would you go? Would the focus shift to them, or would you still want to incorporate Pamela as much as possible without feeling like you were going too far?<\/p>\n

BCK: I don’t think you can do a season two without exploring Pamela and Jason more now that we know, and Pamela knows, he’s out there. Now this sackhead Jason is just sitting out in the woods becoming the sackhead Jason, we know in part two, in the movie, so I would be remiss not to explore him a lot more. I would want to continue to explore his relationship with Pamela. Her trying to get through to him, and seeing how far gone he is. And naturally, we would explore the people in the town more and how their lives intersect with Pamela now that she knows Jason is out there. There’s a lot of story left to tell in season two. And I sort of have a framework for where I would wanna take it. And it’s no less a ride, I would say even more so, than season one. The carnage is just waiting for you, that extra carnage.<\/p>\n

\"It:<\/a>Madeleine Stowe and Bill Skarsgard in “It: Welcome to Derry.” Image courtesy of Brooke Palmer\/HBO<\/p>\n

BC: Obviously, you have a history<\/a> working with iconic horror characters. What lessons did you bring from working at Welcome to Derry to Crystal Lake and vice versa? What are you going to take from Crystal Lake into the second season of Welcome to Derry?<\/p>\n

BCK: It’s a really good question. They’re very different properties. Obviously, one is cosmic horror. It’s much more expansive. You’re dealing with HP Lovecraft kind of stuff. You’re dealing with elder gods and the macroverse and all this kind of crazy King-verse stuff. Friday the 13th is much more earthbound. It’s a hack-and-slash slasher. They didn’t really inform each other that much, but the experience that I got on Welcome to Derry, particularly watching Andy Muschietti work and pull together a show of that magnitude, something that was that huge, because Derry really is a big, big show. Watching him wrangle all that, direct it, and conceive it, all that stuff was very instructive for my experience on Friday the 13th. I definitely took all of that knowledge that I got from him from the experience in general to Crystal Lake. Also, I made a very close friend in my co-showrunner on Welcome to Derry, Jason Fuchs, who I ended up casting as an actor in Crystal Lake; he plays Nate, Brianna’s journalist compatriot. So a lot informed it, and he’s great in the show.<\/p>\n

\"Crystal<\/a>Images: Peacock; HBO Max<\/p>\n

BC: He was! Last question: who would you take in a fight: your version of Jason or your version of Pennywise? Oh my God.<\/p>\n

BCK: Oh my god,\u00a0 I mean, it’s Pennywise; it is a no-brainer. Jason is earthbound, he’s human, even though he has regenerative properties and he’s stronger than most humans, he’s still earthbound and he can still die. Pennywise is an omniscient interdimensional god\/trickster. I think it’s Pennywise all day and twice on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Crystal Lake is now streaming on Peacock<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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