Known as "Il Maestro", Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini earned eight Academy Award nominations for his writing and four Academy Award nominations for his directing over the course of a career that lasted more than forty years. And if Paramount Pictures' wildest dreams had come true, one of Fellini's last Oscar-nominated films before he passed away in 1993 would have been an entry in their FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise.
There's nothing in Fellini's filmography to suggest he would have any interest in making a FRIDAY THE 13TH, he almost certainly wouldn't have. His specialty was dramas, comedies, and romances that examined the human condition. The only contribution he made to the horror genre was a segment of the 1968 Edgar Allan Poe-inspired anthology SPIRITS OF THE DEAD. But when Barbara Sachs signed on to earn her first producing credit with 1988's FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD, she had thoughts of making a FRIDAY THE 13TH so prestigious that it would win an Academy Award – and Fellini was a filmmaker she thought could help pull that off.
As explained in a write-up of THE NEW BLOOD on GQ.com,
Barbara Sachs actually had some outsize aspirations for her first producing credit. "She wanted it to be unlike any other Friday the 13th movie," says (screenwriter Daryl Haney). "She wanted it to win an Academy Award."
That might sound ridiculous now, but if you squint, you can kind of see where Sachs was coming from. Just a year earlier, FATAL ATTRACTION — which was essentially a slasher movie with a glossier, toothier twist — had been nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. And PART VII's production reportedly contemplated pursuing several higher-profile directors to show critics and audiences that they were pursuing a more artful direction for the Friday the 13th franchise — including, most bizarrely, the legendary Palme d’Or winner Federico Fellini.
While we know that THE NEW BLOOD ended up being based around a "Jason vs. CARRIE" concept of the slasher icon taking on a telekinetic teenager, Sachs had her own story idea that drew inspiration from JAWS:
A greedy corporate land developer decides to build a bunch of condos on Crystal Lake, covering up all the Jason Voorhees–related murders so they don’t impact his bottom line.
Sachs didn't get to bring that idea to the screen, nor did she get a high-profile director to make FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII, but the "Jason vs. Carrie" idea was made into a fun movie with FX artist John Carl Beuchler at the helm. Then Sachs returned to produce FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VIII: JASON TAKES MANHATTAN, directed by Rob Hedden, the next year. She hasn't produced another film since 1989.
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