Stoner comedians Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong and horror icon Jason Voorhees could’ve had a joint venture.
The writer and director of the fan-favorite Jason Lives: Friday the 13th VI, Tom McLoughlin, recently revealed he pitched the idea to a producer back in the ’80s. While the idea seemed pretty out there, it was certainly possible, as Paramount held the rights to both film properties at the time.
“What if we do ‘Cheech and Chong Meets Jason?’” McLoughlin told Friday the 13th producer Frank Mancuso Jr., as recalled on Wednesday’s episode of horror filmmaker Mick Garris’ Post Mortem podcast. “They’re like camp counselors or something. It’s like, ‘Hey, man, I saw Jason out there.’ ‘No, man, that’s a myth.’”
While Mancuso wasn’t fond of McLoughlin’s half-baked crossover idea, he did like another: What if New Line Cinema’s Freddy Kreuger met Jason? McLoughlin said that Mancuso told him, “Well, we’re going to try and see if we can work something out.”
Inevitably, the franchises crossed over, once New Line/Warner Bros. got its hands on both properties, for 2003’s Freddy Vs. Jason. The film spent years in development hell, after being teased ten years prior in the closing scene of Friday the 13th’s ninth entry, Jason Goes to Hell. At the end of that film, Freddy’s hand is seen dragging Jason’s classic hockey mask into a grave, suggesting he’d greet the fellow horror icon when he makes the trip to The Bad Place.
RELATED: Friday the 13th’s Corey Feldman Wants a Return to the Franchise
Though Freddy Vs. Jason never got a film sequel, it did see new life in a comic series from WildStorm Productions and Dynamite Entertainment, in which the duo met Bruce Campbell’s Ash from The Evil Dead. That comic got a sequel series in 2009 titled Freddy vs Jason vs Ash: The Nightmare Warriors.
Freddy and Jason could’ve met another popular horror villain, had an initial draft of Freddy Vs. Jason been put into production: Pinhead, of Hellraiser fame. A scrapped version of Freddy Vs. Jason — which you can find online — ends the film with Freddy and Jason, back in Hell, greeted by Doug Bradley’s iconic, decades-old villain.
Though there’s no Nightmare On Elm Street film currently in development, Paramount (which, yet again, has the rights to the franchise) has been working on getting a new Friday the 13th film off the ground from V/H/S helmer David Bruckner.
(via TheWrap)