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‘Friday the 13th’ Origins Series to Shoot in Blairstown

August 5, 2025

friday-13 — The streaming series “Crystal Lake” will film in Blairstown in August, returning to the same town where “Friday the 13th” was filmed in 1979. The new series explores the backstory of Pamela Voorhees (played by Betsy Palmer in the original) and her son, Jason.

The Voorhees family is returning to Main Street in Blairstown next week.

“Crystal Lake,” a prequel to “Friday the 13th” — currently filming under the working title “Mama’s Boy” — will be shot on Main Street and Bridge Street on Aug. 11, according to the Blairstown Police Department.

Permits allow access to Main Street from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., which will result in the street being closed for the day. Parking will not be allowed starting Sunday night, Aug. 10, through 8 p.m. Aug. 11.

There will also be intermittent closures of Bridge Street.

Both township streets were prominently featured in the opening scenes of the original “Friday the 13th,” filmed during the summer and fall of 1979. Annie, the first victim in the film, was seen walking into town from Blair Place, past the mill and the First National Bank.

She’s later filmed walking along Main Street in front of Roy’s Hall, then stopping to pet a dog at an old gas station on Bridge Street — now Blairstown Auto Spa.

And, of course, Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco in Hardwick played host to the notorious Camp Crystal Lake.

Sean S. Cunningham and Steve Miner, two of the original film’s producers, met with town officials in mid-1979 to obtain filming permission.

“Cunningham and Miner met with the township’s leaders in order to foster cooperation and goodwill between the production,” wrote author David Grove in his book, “On Location in Blairstown: The Making of Friday the 13th.”

“Cunningham and Miner also were able to secure the use of a fire truck and several police cars — luxuries they never could’ve afforded were it not for Cunningham’s charm and personal touch,” Grove wrote. “The fire truck was especially useful for creating rain effects.”

The original movie was made on a shoestring budget of about $550,000 and grossed nearly $59 million in its initial 1980 release — the equivalent of about $230 million in 2025 dollars. The entire franchise, including sequels, spin-offs, a TV series and merchandise, has generated nearly $1 billion over the past 45 years.

Legal disputes over the movie rights have tied up the franchise since the last official film in 2009. Several unofficial films based on the original have been shot in Blairstown and Hardwick — but these are fan-made. These projects are generally permitted under copyright law, as long as they are non-commercial and are not monetized.

Peacock and production company A24 currently hold the streaming rights to the franchise, allowing them to use characters, names and imagery from the original “Friday the 13th” in “Crystal Lake.” These rights apply only to streaming, not theatrical releases.

If you’ve somehow missed it, “Friday the 13th” helped launch the modern slasher genre. In the original, a group of teenagers at the recently reopened Camp Crystal Lake are murdered one by one by a mysterious killer.

Spoiler alert: The killer is Pamela Voorhees, who blames the camp counselors for her son Jason’s drowning decades earlier. Pamela is eventually beheaded by Alice, the last surviving counselor.

In the final scene, Alice dreams she’s floating in a canoe on Crystal Lake when Jason suddenly emerges and pulls her underwater. She wakes up in a hospital bed — or does she? The ambiguous ending became the foundation for countless sequels in which Jason returns, kills more counselors, and is repeatedly killed and resurrected.

But “Crystal Lake” looks backward, telling the story of Pamela Voorhees in the years before she became a killer — when she was just… Mom.

The series will stream on Peacock and is expected to premiere in 2026.

Joe Phalon, Contributing Writer

Contributing Writer

Joe brings decades of journalism experience to the Ridge View Echo, covering everything from local school boards to the U.S. Supreme Court. A former National Law Journal editor and Columbia Law School press officer, he now enjoys telling community stories in Blairstown, where he lives with his wife, Rose, and their two dachshunds.