As 1993's JASON GOES TO HELL comes to an end, there's a cameo by the familiar gloved hand of Freddy Krueger, reaching up from the ground to drag the hockey mask of Jason Voorhees down into Hell with the rest of him. This image and the accompanying cackle on the soundtrack was something that caused me to leave the theatre with a smile on my face, but I didn't really expect that a full Freddy and Jason crossover movie was going to be made. In the summer of 1995, I was overjoyed when I opened a Fangoria magazine to see confirmation inside that a FREDDY VS. JASON movie was indeed in the works.
For eight years, I followed the progress of FREDDY VS. JASON as it made its way through development hell. Over a dozen screenwriters were hired to try to crack the story, directors came and went… I was confident that the movie would actually happen someday, but the wait for it was torturous. When FREDDY VS. JASON was finally released in 2003, I found it to be worth the wait – and went to see it in the theatre 12 times.
Since I spent many of my formative years looking forward to FREDDY VS. JASON and obsessing over its possibilities, stories of that film's development are fascinating to me. I have read a few of the rejected drafts and would love to get my hands on all of them, I want to know about every step that was taken in trying to bring that concept to the screen.
Thankfully, Phantasm: Exhumed author Dustin McNeill shares my fascination with the making of FREDDY VS. JASON and has made that the focus of his upcoming book Slash of the Titans: The Road to Freddy vs. Jason.
As McNeill told the folks at Bloody-Disgusting, his book is
not specifically about the 2003 film, but rather about the ten years the project spent in development hell. As I like to say, it’s the story of one film, two horror icons and an army of screenwriters. My book explores ten wildly different directions considered for Freddy vs Jason with comments from many of the people involved.
Further details on the book:
Learn about surprising twists that never made it into the finished film. Depending on the draft, Freddy was variously a camper and counselor at Camp Crystal Lake before becoming the Springwood Slasher. Another script charged that Jason was actually one of the original Elm Street kids, his parents among the vigilante mob that burned Freddy alive.
Learn how screenwriters sought to include other genre baddies such as Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, Pinhead, Leatherface, Satan and even Hitler!
Slash of the Titans contains answers to these questions and more…
– Who did Steven Spielberg personally talk out of helming Freddy vs Jason as their directorial debut?
– Which Friday the 13th filmmaker pitched Cheech & Chong Meet Jason to Paramount?
– Whose abandoned draft prompted New Line to begin pre-production on prior to being finished?
– Which future Oscar-winning filmmaker turned down the chance to direct Freddy vs Jason?
– Why did New Line choose the script draft that became the eventual 2003 film?
Slash of the Titans will be published by Harker Press, with McNeill aiming for a February 2017 release. This book is absolutely a must-have for me, I'm very much looking forward to reading what McNeill was able to dig up.
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