Horror in the 1980s was all about the slasher craze and the Friday the 13th franchise was king. From 1980 to 1989, an astonishing eight films about Camp Crystal Lake were pumped out. That slowed down after New Line Cinema bought the rights to the franchise from Paramount. Over the next decade, there would only be three Jason Voorhees-centered movies, and then the franchise sat dormant until the reboot in 2009, also called Friday the 13th. The 2009 entry was a success, making $91 million worldwide on a $19 million budget. It is the 12th entry in the series and the next would be the perfectly titled Friday the 13th Part 13. With how well the reboot was received, it was just a matter of time before it came to be. Almost a decade and a half later, we're still waiting.
While we've waited, there was a fun video game, Friday the 13th: The Game, to hold fans over, but, alas, it has now died like a horny teenager at Camp Crystal Lake as well. And why is that? Oh, you know, just a casual, decades-long legal dispute between the original creators. Until they can come to an agreement over the ownership of the franchise, Jason Voorhees will remain hiding in the woods and away from our screens.
‘1980’s ‘Friday the 13th’ Put Its Own Spin on the Slasher Genre
Image via Paramount Pictures
With the success of John Carpenter's Halloweenin 1978, director Sean S. Cunninghamdecided to blatantly rip it off with his own slasher movie... 1980's Friday the 13th. At first, all he had was a title with no story. Cunningham had written before, but directing is where he'd made his mark, with the '70s spent going from directing sexploitation films to family sports comedies. Victor Miller was then brought in to write the screenplay for Friday the 13th. It wasn't Miller's first time working with Cunningham, as he wrote the director's previous two films as well, Manny's Orphans and Here Come the Tigers.
Those might not have been big hits, but Friday the 13th sure would be. It was anything but a Halloween clone. It traded in suburbia for the woods of a summer camp, and its killer was a mystery. Rather than knowing exactly who we're dealing with like Michael Myers in Halloween, Friday the 13th is a whodunit, resulting in a shocking reveal that a middle-aged woman named Pamela Voorhees (Betsy Palmer) is the one killing off camp counselors as revenge for other counselors not paying attention, resulting in her young son Jason's drowning decades before.
The Writer and Director of the Original 'Friday the 13th' Fought Over Ownership
Image via Paramount Pictures
Friday the 13th was a big hit, making nearly $40 million. That success meant sequels, with another one coming out the very next year. Miller wouldn't be involved ever again in the franchise, but Cunningham stuck around, not as a director but as a producer of the later New Line Cinema films. There were no issues until decades later when Miller decided to fight for what he was owed. The way he saw it, as the writer of Friday the 13th, he deserved ownership, especially considering the Copyright Law of 1976, which said that an author of a work after 35 years can petition for a transfer of the copyright. It wouldn't be that simple. Cunningham fought back, claiming to be the owner of Friday the 13th. His reasoning was that Victor Miller was nothing more than a work-for-hire writer. It was Cunningham's idea, Miller simply was the employee hired to write it.
Who Won the 'Friday the 13th' Lawsuit?
Miller disagreed that he was a work-for-hire writer. According to his lawyer, the script was commissioned as part of a film, and there was never anything presented to Miller that said that the script was a work made for hire. Cunningham and the film's producers said that Cunningham was behind every creative and financial decision and that a standard WGA form agreement would have shown Miller that he was Cunningham's employee. In 2018, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled in favor of Victor Miller. He agreed that the screenplay for Friday the 13th wasn't a made-for-hire work. It was his ruling that Miller was an independent contractor. This was a big win for Miller, but not the end of his fight, as Cunningham would quickly appeal.
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The lawsuit thankfully came to a complete end in September 2021. It was here that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held up Victor Miller's win that he was an independent contractor and not an employee of Cunningham's hired to write the screenplay. This meant that he reclaimed the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise. It wasn't a complete win for Miller regarding complete control of the direction of the franchise. Sean S. Cunningham kept control of the foreign rights for one. There was also one more key piece of information that didn't make the next steps so clear.
What Does the Lawsuit Mean for the Future of Friday the 13th?
Image via Paramount Pictures
For a horror fan, you might think, okay, Victor Miller won, now get to making some more Friday the 13th movies! We miss Jason, bring him back! While Michael Myers was out there in another Halloween trilogy the last few years, the hockey-masked Jason Voorhees has been dormant. Finally, we're going to get Friday the 13th Part 13 and more, right? Not so fast.
Sean S. Cunningham also kept control of the intellectual property from the Friday the 13th sequels. What does that mean? As Victor Miller only wrote the first movie, he only retained the intellectual property from that project. If Miller wanted to greenlight a movie called Friday the 13th about camp counselors getting killed at Camp Crystal Lake, so be it. There was just one major flaw though. Jason Voorhees is not in the original Friday the 13th film. As Ghostface will be happy to remind you, it was his mother, Mrs. Voorhees, who was the killer.
Miller owned the rights to Pamela Voorhees, so he could remake the first film if he liked, but it became murky as far as Jason goes. Could Victor Miller have a Friday the 13th film made with Jason Voorhees in it, when he's not the one who created the character? Jason Voorhees is technically in the first movie, seen as a child in the dream sequence at the end that has him jumping out of the lake and attacking final girl Alice (Adrienne King). This was Jason as a child though, not the adult wearing the sack over his head or the hockey mask. Victor Miller may have created Jason, but not the one that has since become an icon.
'Friday the 13th: The Game' Brought Back Kane Hodder
Image via Gun Media
It's rough being a Friday the 13th fan. While Halloween's Michael Myers and Scream's Ghostface have been resurrected with several sequels of late, Jason fans get nothing. Who knows when we'll get another movie. While we wait for another movie, there has been some good news for those who love the hockey-masked slasher in the form of a video game. That might seem like a mediocre consolation prize, but it ended up being one of the best horror games in recent memory.
Released by Gun Media, Friday the 13th: The Game fittingly came out on Friday, October 13, 2017. Released on digital for the PC, as well as PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, this wasn't an easy cash grab but a labor of love. The game puts you right back in the feel of the '80s at Camp Crystal Lake. You could either be a camper trying to survive the night or play as Jason himself, and slash your way through the campers with some of the sickest kills you'll ever see. (A few of these have to be included if there's ever another movie!) As proof of how much passion went into it, Kane Hodder, who played Jason in four Friday the 13th films, was brought back to do motion capture for the killer.
Maybe it wasn't the same as the movie, but with the feel of it, including that famous score, Friday the 13th: The Game kept hungry fans filled for the time being. But, this being Friday the 13th, the good times couldn't last forever. Gun's license for the video game ended last year, and as of January 1, 2025, the servers were shut down, ending your chance to play online. It's not yet known if you'll still be able to play it offline in the future. As Fangoria notes, Friday the 13th: The Game was such a hit that it helped launch other horror games, like the later versions of Dead by Daylight, and games for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (with Kane Hodder playing Leatherface!) and Killer Clowns From Outer Space.
What Will the 'Friday the 13th' Prequel Series 'Crystal Lake' Look Like?
AFriday the 13th movie remains in limbo and the video game is no more, but there is one last hope in a TV show. Fittingly, on Halloween of 2022 came a major announcement: Friday the 13th was coming back in 2024. It wouldn't be as a feature film, however, but an A24 TV series for Peacock called Crystal Lake.Bryan Fuller of Hannibal fame would be the showrunner and executive producer, with Victor Miller serving as an executive producer. Even Kevin Williamson, the horror legend who wrote Scream, was going to come in and write an episode. But how did they get around the Jason rights? Well, Crystal Lake is a prequel series that will take place before the events of the first film. Even the star of the first film, Adrienne King, was somehow being brought back in a role. Jason can exist in this world as his child self and his mother can be there as well. Still, that means no masked Jason, right?
It would seem that it is very clear that this series can't have an adult Jason, and while Bryan Fuller and others have been tightlipped about exactly what Crystal Lake will be about, he did interestingly tell Fangoria, "We can use everything. We can go to Hell, we can go to space. That's not to say that we will do those things ... although if we do go 10 seasons, I will be lobbying hard to go to space." How can that be when Cunningham holds those rights?
Alas, Fuller's comments were for not — at least for him — as in June 2024, he announced that he had been let go as the series showrunner, as A24 looked to go in a different direction. After yet another rejection for Friday the 13th fans, it felt like a good idea to give up on the TV series idea. Jason Voorhees is a simple story that works best in a film format. A TV show would only threaten to stretch his mythology out so far that it took away what made him scary. Still, A24 and Peacock weren't ready to get up. In August, Brad Caleb Kane was tapped as the new showrunner. Kane is also the showrunner for the It prequel series Welcome to Derry, which is scheduled to hit Max later this year.
Who knows what awaits for Friday the 13th? The outcry over the end of the video game shows how much fans still care and want more Jason Voorhees. Hopefully, the lawsuit gets figured out, and we can get the Friday the 13th Part 13 that some of us want so badly. And as for Crystal Lake? Maybe there will be an adult Jason somehow, maybe there won't be. At some point, we'll find out more, but until we do, horror fans should be happy that Hollywood isn't ready to give up. It looks like we're finally going back to Camp Crystal Lake after so many years away.
Friday the 13th is available to rent on Amazon in the U.S.
Friday the 13th is a horror-slasher film by director Sean S. Cunningham and follows a group of camp counselors who are stalked and murdered by an unknown assailant while trying to reopen a summer known to be the site of a child's drowning and a grisly double murder. The film began a decades-long franchise that would eventually lead to the creation of Jason Voorhees, one of the most popular horror icons of all time.
Release Date
May 9, 1980
Director
Sean S. Cunningham
Cast
Peter Brouwer
, Adrienne King
, Betsy Palmer
, Jeannine Taylor
, Kevin Bacon
, Robbi Morgan
, Harry Crosby
Image by Jefferson Chacon
Image via Paramount Pictures
Image via Paramount Pictures
Image via Paramount Pictures
Image via Gun Media
English (US) ·