Freddy vs. Jason (2003)

In 1993, New Line Cinema bought the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise, which featured as its central character the hockey-masked, seemingly indestructible killer, Jason Voorhees (who first appeared in 1980’s Friday the 13th and went on to star in nine sequels). From the outset the studio envisioned an on-screen match up between Jason and their own equally iconic movie madman Freddy Krueger, who stalked people through their dreams in the popular Nightmare on Elm Street series (which began in 1984 and spawned six sequels). "Freddy and Jason are both pop horror icons," says producer Sean S. Cunningham, who produced and directed the original Friday the 13th. "They’ve been in the culture for over twenty years and each of them has become a symbol of all those things that collectively we are afraid of, first as teenagers and then as adults."

But the studio knew they were drawing on an established tradition in both film and comic books of combining two super-villains, and they knew there was a legion of fans for both franchises ready to pounce if anyone messed with their dream match-up. Although there were potential minefields everywhere, the first and most obvious challenge was – how do you honor both franchises equally and not resort to camp? Another dramatic question was, according to Cunningham, "who’s tougher? Because neither Freddy nor Jason has been able to be defeated in their previous films. Audiences will absolutely require that these two seemingly invincible forces engage in a killer battle."

These questions proved to have complicated answers. A number of screenwriters took cracks at devising the right scenario before Damian Shannon and Mark Swift hit the target. Says Shannon, "We knew that you could have a smart and scary crossover that didn’t throw the original films out the window. So the first thing we did was come up with a list of rules we thought were crucial for a successful merging of the two franchises. Adds Swift "First and foremost was that we wouldn’t violate the mythologies and back stories for Freddy and Jason. Instead, their pasts play a vital role in their battle to find out once and for all who’s the ‘baddest mother’ in all of horror."

Once the initial treatment was approved, the studio sent the writers off with little interference to craft a screenplay. "That’s one of the great things about working for New Line," says Swift. "The studio lets you do your thing. Of course Robert Shaye, the head of the studio, was always very involved in the process. He has a great understanding of the horror genre and of these franchises in particular. He even has a cameo in the movie."

Robert Englund, who has played the role of Freddy Krueger since the character’s creation in 1984, was attached from the beginning, though he, like the producers, was not happy with earlier attempts at the script, and his approval was vital to the project coming together. Shannon and Swift’s script, says Englund, "brought to the story all the things I wanted to see. I really wanted to exploit the nightmares of Jason Voorhees, to have Freddy privy to what makes Jason tick, to go into the nightmare world of little Jason and the fantasy world of big Jason and, in doing so, to have his back story reiterated through the plot. Freddy needed to get into Jason’s head and the screenwriters solved that."

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