Long before any sort of justice had ever dawned, Freddy vs. Jason hit theaters and to this day, is still remembered as the first notable crossover between two major horror franchises. Since then, we’ve received a couple Alien vs. Predator movies, the second of which was so bad that Fox split them back into their own separate entities, and to a much, much lesser extent, Lake Placid vs. Anaconda.
Believe it or not, though, the road to getting the dream mashup between the two slashers made was a difficult one. With the first seeds having been planted in the closing moments of 1993’s Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday, you’d have thought it’d be smooth sailing. In reality, though, it was quite the opposite.
None of us could have foreseen that the Hell Jason had actually been sent off to was that of the developmental variety, but after burning through script after script after script, New Line Cinema was eventually ready to get it done, with the momentous motion picture premiering in 2003 to a middling reception. Could things have worked out better though had some of the studio’s earlier ideas made it into the final cut?
As you can imagine, there were many concepts tossed around for this particular crossover before the one we ultimately got was settled upon, and Collider’s now dug through the archives to bring us some of the craziest ideas that New Line had for Freddy vs. Jason.
For starters, they toyed with the premise of Jason in a courtroom and on trial for his many murders, with the character being portrayed as a “a spookily scarred but all too human man named Jason Voorhees.” While that would’ve been a bit silly, another idea was to have a cult of Freddy, with the members being “wayward teens who worship Freddy Kreuger; young punks that wear sweaters and red glasses, burn their skin, and take high-dose sleeping pills to communicate with their idol.”
Apparently, the main thrust of the plot would’ve been the cult working to bring the horror icon into the real world, with the only way to stop him being to “Frankenstein Jason Voorhees’ body back together to stand in his way.” Sounds like it would’ve been a fun ride, but ultimately, it was scrapped.
The last one we want to highlight actually involved yet another crossover, as Hellraiser‘s Pinhead would’ve shown up. The idea was that a cliffhanger ending would see Camp Crystal Lake wind up in Hell, where the titular characters run into the Cenobite. Apparently, the studio was into this one, but couldn’t get the rights to Pinhead and thus, wasn’t able to make it happen.
You can check out a few more ideas as well by hitting the link below, but it’s clear that Freddy vs. Jason was almost a very different film and it’ll certainly be interesting to see if any of these discarded concepts ever find themselves back in play again should a sequel ever materialize.
