The Friday the 13th series has been in a lull since 2009, with no new installments released since the ill-fated remake, but numerous ideas—including one involving an unlikely hero—circulated at one point in time. Thanks to the ongoing legal battles, further releases have been stalled, but ample discussion regarding what's next for the long-running horror franchise has continued regardless. One such idea was an offshoot film by Adam Marcus’ production company, Skeleton Crew, that would follow Creighton Duke from Jason Goes to Hell.
Traditionally, Friday the 13th has followed the story of Jason Voorhees, a young boy who drowned at Camp Crystal Lake while the counselors were enjoying some personal time instead of watching him. The murdered Jason comes back from the dead to seek vengeance on other unwitting teens partying at the summer camp, or whoever else might be around at the time. Though in the first movie the killer is Pamela Voorhees, Jason’s mother, Jason does the killing in each installment after.
With a total of twelve slasher films and a television series, plus multiple novels, comic books, and video games, the story of Jason Voorhees, the hockey-masked killer with the machete has been thoroughly explored. He’s been to Manhattan, to space, and even to Hell, so would it be a good idea to explore another character, or would that be a huge mistake for the franchise?
Creighton Duke Could Have Been the Next Friday the 13th Star
In Jason Goes to Hell, Creighton Duke (Steven Williams) is a bounty hunter who specialized in knowledge of the Voorhees family, seeking out Jason in order to kill him and get revenge for the death of his girlfriend. Though he was seemingly killed towards the end of the movie, the director intended the death to be more ambiguous, and felt that Duke would make an excellent subject for a film of his own.
The director of Jason Goes to Hell, Adam Marcus, explained on the Without Your Head podcast in May 2018 that he fully intended to resurrect Creighton Duke and create a spin-off series with him as the focus. The idea of a supernatural bounty hunter isn’t necessarily a bad idea, as evidenced by the popularity of TV series like Supernatural, but would it have been a good idea for the Friday the 13th series?
Jason Voorhees is the heart and soul of the Friday the 13th franchise, so without Jason there is no Friday the 13th. However, that’s not to say that a spin-off film series would be a bad idea. Horror spin-offs have gotten a lot of traction with films like Annabelle and The Nun and TV series like Bates Motel and Hannibal gaining popularity in recent years.
A Creighton Duke spin-off could easily have been successful, but in order to draw audiences it would have needed to create a unique story discrete from Friday the 13th. Ideally, it would work best as a TV series, focusing on Creighton as a character, perhaps following other bounty-hunting contracts with a similar "monster of the week" formula to The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and the first few seasons of Supernatural.
Trying to move Friday the 13th away from Jason is a big mistake. For proof, consider the hate Halloween III: Season of the Witch got and continues to get, even though it’s actually a very good film. Creating a spin-off would need to clearly be just that, a spin-off, not the next installment or a new direction for the series as a whole. A side character spin-off might be a better move for a Friday the 13th TV series, as it offers a rationale for a shorter, episodic story rather than just watching Jason Voorhees slash up teenagers.
Creighton Duke is an engaging character with an interesting backstory that could definitely be explored in a TV series format. The character archetype is one that audiences have shown they enjoy in an episodic format, and more POC-led horror is never a bad idea. All-in-all, this idea could have been a good one, if executed properly and not used as a way to push Jason out of the spotlight, because Friday the 13th fans will never stand for that.