Friday the 13th

Friday the 13th is a 1980 American slasher film produced and directed by Sean S. Cunningham, written by Victor Miller, and starring Betsy Palmer, Adrienne King, Harry Crosby, Laurie Bartram, Mark Nelson, Jeannine Taylor, Robbi Morgan, and Kevin Bacon. The plot follows a group of teenage camp counselors who are murdered one by one by an unknown killer while they are attempting to reopen an abandoned summer camp with a tragic past.

Prompted by the success of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), Cunningham put out an advertisement to sell the film in Variety in early 1979, while Miller was still drafting the screenplay. After casting the film in New York City, filming took place in New Jersey in the fall of 1979, on an estimated budget of between $550,000 and $650,000. A bidding war ensued over the finished film, ending with Paramount Pictures acquiring the film for domestic distribution, while Warner Bros. secured international distribution rights. Friday the 13th became the first independent slasher film to be acquired by a major motion picture studio.