The concept of a "versus" movie is not a new one. It has been around for a long time. There's a great tradition of mixing and matching in the movies. I never wanted a Freddy vs. Jason to be "Abbott and Costello Meet Freddy and Jason," but Ghostbusters was, and is, a great concept. And there were other great horror mix-ups, whether it be with the Wolf Man or Frankenstein or Dracula. The idea of Freddy vs. Jason is of a great, long tradition.
The many writers of Freddy vs. Jason. Developed over a period of 12 years, the project would see some of Hollywood's top scribes attempted to draft a workable screenplay. Among them (from left) Ronald D. Moore, best known for his work on the re-imagined Star Trek series; Mark Verheiden, who has written extensively for the Smallville and Battlestar Galactica television series; and David J. Schow, a name familiar to many a genre fan, having written the franchise installments A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III.
ADAM MARCUS, Director, Jason Goes to Hell:
Back when we were making Jason Goes to Hell, Dean Lorey, Noel Cunningham and I were trying to come up with more gags to put in the movie. Then I said, "You know, doesn't New Line own Freddy outright?" And the wheels started turning. I called Mark Ordesky and Michael De Luca at New Line, and asked, "Can we have the claw?" And it was very funny, 'cause they were a bit covetous of it. They asked nervously, "What are you going to do with it? And why?" But when we told them our idea, they flipped.
I remember the first test screening after we finished the film. When that moment hit, when Freddy's claw lunged out of the ground at Jason's mask, the entire test audience got up on their feet and cheered. And Mike De Luca, Bob Shaye and Mark Ordesky were standing in the back, and they all just looked at each other with such glee. Mark and Mike even high-fived each other. I think that's when Freddy vs. Jason was really born.
LEWIS ABERNATHY, Screenwriter:
Freddy vs. Jason was already in development at New Line when I started working for Sean Cunningham around late 1993. I felt we should make fun of ourselves, but in a way where you don't know that we're making fun of ourselves. I also felt that Jason should be a good guy. It's almost like a comic book. Go ahead and turn him into Spider-Man. Make it a PG-13 movie. Turn it on its head, but let's not make the same old dark, dreary stuff about a guy in a hockey mask. I also had the idea that Jason was going on this murderous rampage to get back at the guy who drowned him—and that camp counselor was Freddy Krueger.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
Lewis came up with some really fun stuff. And that was the first time these characters had been able to co-exist in any form, so it was really kind of cool. We had a meeting between Lewis and former New Line President of Production Mike De Luca. James Cameron came in—Lewis was in Titanic—to say, "I believe in Lewis, he's going to do a great job." But as it turned out, Lewis went in a direction that De Luca didn't like, so he ended up hiring someone else.
RONALD D. MOORE, Screenwriter:
Mike De Luca was definitely a fan of Brannon Braga and I because of our work on Star Trek: The Next Generation. We had a sit-down meeting with Mike and he gave us carte blanche to come up with a concept.
The key decision for us was that we wanted to take either Freddy or Jason's point of view. We felt like if they were both bad and they were both villains, you won't root for either one of them. If that's the case, it doesn't really matter who wins. And there was something interesting about taking the less accessible of the two—Jason, the guy who never even speaks—and making him the anti-hero of the piece. That's what intrigued us. So we put Jason on trial, and the hero of the movie was his defense attorney. We were trying to comment on sequel-itis and the franchise aspect of it all. It was interesting pop culture stuff that we were examining. And this was also right in the thick of the O.J. Simpson trial and the media circus surrounding it.
Wes Craven had done New Nightmare, which had already broken the fourth wall. But that film was not a hit. New Line didn't mention any specific problems with the self-referential angle of our script at the time. They just said of New Nightmare, "It didn't do that well at the box office." After we turned in our second draft, we were greeted with silence. For weeks, if not months. In fact, I don't think we ever heard from them again. It was just, "Okay, guys, great. Thanks! We'll get back to you." But that's common in Hollywood—people don't want to call and give you bad news. So we just shrugged it off. It was disappointing, but we had just got Star Trek: First Contact, so we definitely had enough on our plate anyway.
DAVID J. SCHOW, Screenwriter:
Freddy vs. Jason was the easiest screenwriting job I ever got. I had written Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III for New Line, and also had done a polish on Nightmare on Elm Street 5. I just happened to be in New Line's offices one day, and literally I got the job with Mike De Luca looking up at me and saying, "You want to take a crack at this?"
My script roughly fell into three parts: The first part was about a guy who communes with Freddy in his dreams and is, in fact, the head of a cult of Freddy fanatics called the Fred Heads who want to bring Freddy back from the dead and do it by any means necessary. The second part was about resurrecting Jason from Camp Crystal Lake, because he has to fight Freddy. Finally, in the third act, they have to hypnotize Jason with a drug so he can fall asleep and enter a dream version of Camp Crystal Lake, where we see a glimpse of his backstory with Freddy. Then, at the right moment, the kids have to wake up Jason so he can bring Freddy back out into the real world and do battle.
In looking at the Freddy vs. Jason they ultimately made, you can see some of the concepts that had already been kicking around for awhile. If any of that is similar to the finished movie, it may have started with my draft.
Freddy vs. Jason—the bastard child of a hundred rewrites—was finally released from development hell by co-screenwriters Mark Swift (with machete) and Damian Shannon. It would be a long road from script to screen for the pair. "We wrote Freddy vs. Jason together in a little coffee shop," says Swift. "And we had these little goals along the way. First it was just, 'I hope this movie gets made.' Then it we just hoped to get screen credit. Finally, when the movie was about to be made, it was, "I hope we just to get a picture of ourselves on the set. Wouldn't that be cool?'" Continues Shannon: "It was really exciting to be on set. As a horror fan, just to think what it would be like to see Freddy and Jason on the same screen—and have yourself included in that experience—is the ultimate."
ETHAN REIFF, Screenwriter:
Cyrus and I wrote from scratch, but there were elements of previous scripts that New Line liked. They liked the Freddy cult. They liked the idea of the drug that can put you to sleep. But those were the only two things we were handed, like, "Okay, do a version of this."
The one major thing we felt we were contributing was to tie the origins of these characters together and to not pull any punches. We had a scene where you literally see Freddy Krueger as a young adult camp counselor having just raped Jason by the lake. I still remember my brother reading that draft and saying, "I can't believe you guys actually did that."
CYRUS VORIS, Screenwriter:
Our thing was like, one's a child molester and the other one is, for all intents and purposes, a disturbed, molested child. And Jason has an ax to grind against Freddy, because he's the guy who molested him and threw him in the lake and let him drown. That seemed like a good driving motivational thing.
The other thing was, Freddy at that time had started to become a hero in pop culture. There was the Freddy's Nightmares TV show where he was a kind of Extreme Justice host. Like, "If you mess up, kids, you're going to get what you deserve." And it was freaky. It was like, "What the fuck? He's a fucking child molester and child killer. Why is he a hero?" We didn't want to shy away from what was the genuinely evil about him.
NOEL CUNNINGHAM:
Was this the best script of Freddy vs. Jason that could have been made? Probably not. But it was good. It was certainly the best one we had by that poin
t. And then Rob Bottin was brought on to direct it, and he brings with him a whole cache of effects knowledge. We also had David Goyer and James Dale Robinson rewrite it.
SEAN CUNNINGHAM:
I never wanted to change all the things that worked well in the Freddy or Jason movies—I just wanted to add stuff that had never been there before. But in order to accommodate Mike De Luca—and I don't regret this—I was willing to work with any writer he decided on. Finally, with Cy and Ethan, they worked with me for several months and we turned in a draft that I thought was pretty successful. And it really had a lot of elements of Lewis Abernathy's original draft, who I had started with in the first place. But De Luca just flat-out hated it. Then Scream opened and New Line was like, "It's a brand new ball game now. We can't do the same old stuff." So De Luca basically just threw the script away.
MARK VERHEIDEN, Screenwriter:
I believe most of the drafts up until that point dealt with the idea of this Freddy cult. But that was the one thing I reacted very negatively to. I came back and said, "You've already got Freddy and Jason. You don't need these goons running around." I liked the idea of trying to connect Freddy and Jason to the history of the other movies. So I introduced some of the characters from the previous films in there, too.
I eventually wrote two drafts—the first I delivered in August 1999, and the second by the end of the year. I suppose my experience was probably like a lot of the other writers—there are no big, "You're done, buddy!" discussions. You just don't hear much until you read in the trades that they've hired writer number nine or whoever.
ROBERT ENGLUND:
It was a rough time. I wasn't really privy to a lot of what was going on. I had heard a lot of people at New Line suggest that a lot of the writers were coming in and taking the money and not taking it seriously. Or they thought New Line wanted it to be more camp and self-referential than they did. All I knew was that every director and special effects guy who I would hear about being connected to this film was somebody I wanted to work with. But, for a variety of reasons, it wasn't coming to pass. And while I was waiting, it was getting to the point where I was having to turn down other jobs because it kept seeming like Freddy vs. Jason was going to happen at any minute. So it was getting frustrating.
"The key to Jason's anger is very simple," says director Ronny Yu. "Anyone would be pissed off if someone tried to mess with their mother. Jason's just like, 'Don't fuck with my mom!'"
In early 2000, New Line Cinema would undergo an extensive shake-up in its executive ranks, starting with the well-publicized split of longtime President of Production Michael De Luca. And with De Luca went Freddy vs. Jason's biggest—and perhaps only remaining—champion at the studio. Yet the event ultimately turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Robert Shaye, newly energized and with a fresh new team of executives in place, made Freddy vs. Jason an even greater imperative.
Prior to his departure, De Luca heard one final pitch from two enthusiastic young screenwriters looking for their first big break in Hollywood. Enter Damian Shannon and Mark Swift.
MARK SWIFT, Co-Screenwriter:
Damian and I met at USC in 1988, although we both eventually left—Damian went to NYU Film School, and I went to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Then we hooked up again and started writing after that, working on our first screenplay. So I guess we were friends first before we were screenwriters. And we're both big horror fans.
When we came in to New Line to meet about Freddy vs. Jason, we were pretty nervous. We took it as a challenge and a huge opportunity. I loved Nightmare on Elm Street and I loved Friday the 13th. Just to be a part of that history—we couldn't pass it up. So we created a mission statement that we gave to New Line about how we would do the movie. We just wanted to keep the story in tune with what we'd seen before. We didn't want to change the mythologies. We just wanted to take these two histories, combine them, and then ask, "What are they going to fight over?" We also didn't want to make either of them the butt of the joke anymore.
DAMIAN SHANNON, Co-Screenwriter:
We decided that the story should start right from the last scene of Jason Goes to Hell— the point where Freddy grabs Jason's mask. We asked ourselves what that meant—why was Freddy grabbing the mask? We felt we needed to understand what the friction was between these two guys. Why are they trying to kill each other, without making Freddy the one who raped him? We wanted to take Freddy and Jason back to their roots, and to see these characters restored to their former glory.
MARK SWIFT:
We watched all of the Nightmare and Friday films, top to bottom—some of them two or three times. And if anybody watches Freddy Vs. Jason, they'll know we love Nightmare on Elm Street 3. We took a lot of stuff from Dream Warriors—actually lot of the nightmare stuff in Freddy vs. Jason continues from 3, then sort of ignoring 4, 5 and Final Nightmare. And then obviously New Nightmare is a completely separate thing. With the Fridays, there were some great moments in Part VI, too. And the first one, Part 2 and Part 3 in 3-D are amazing, too.
DAMIAN SHANNON:
I'm a huge Jason Lives fan, actually. That's the Jason we modeled our Jason on, story-wise. There are some great visual moments in Part VI and we replicated some of those in our screenplay.
MARK SWIFT:
We pitched Mike De Luca our approach and he was very excited. We were hired by the end of December 1999. Then shortly thereafter, Mike split New Line, and there was a regime change. Suddenly, there were no Freddy vs. Jason fans left at the studio. We had to get everyone re-excited, or this movie that had taken almost 10 years to get green-lit was going to die again. So that's when we did a 40-page treatment, our list of the "rules" for Freddy vs. Jason, an executive summary, and all this stuff, just to try and get the studio to believe in us again.
ROBERT SHAYE:
Freddy vs. Jason languished because it was difficult to find a production executive within New Line, up to and including our head of production at that time, who really cared about it. Then when we changed our leadership, we renewed this imperative to President of Production Toby Emmerich that we have to find someone who is going to get behind this. And we came up with a somewhat unlikely candidate, this wonderful woman named Stokely Chaffin, who just loves the genre and could really jump in.
"Jason's just sort of a little misguided," says actor and stuntman Ken Kirzinger, who assumed the role of Jason Voorhees for the first time in Freddy vs. Jason. "I like to call him a 'psycho savant.' He lost his mom early. He's been living out in the woods and under the lake with no guidance. He's just following a mandate, 'Kill all those bad kids.' He thinks that what he's doing is right. He's doing it for his mother, not for his own personal greed or anything else."
TOBY EMMERICH, President of Production, New Line Cinema:
When I came in to run production, getting sequels made was clearly Bob's big priority. Bob and Michael Lynne were very frustrated by how hard it had been to get sequels going. They said, "Don't drop the ball. We want Freddy vs. Jason, a Dumb and Dumber prequel, another Friday sequel and another Blade movie." One of the reasons Bob was so attracted to shooting the Lord of the Rings movies together was that if the first one worked, we had two more in the can.
It's not very sexy when people ask what project you're working on and you have to say, "Oh, I'm doing Freddy vs. Jason." A lot of execs here didn't want anything to do with Freddy vs. Jason. One reason I hired Stokely was that she had a real enthusiasm for getting it made.
STOKELY CHAFFIN, Production Executive, New Line Cinema:
I had worked with Neal H. Moritz before, and we had produced the I Know What You Did Last Summer movies and Soul Survivors. I always loved horror movies, and horror movies always find an audience. Several years ago I heard the idea of Freddy vs. Jason and I went, "Genius! That's perfect! What a great event picture!" Then years went by, and I get Freddy vs. Jason as a project. For me, it was always meant to be.
When I started, there had been a million drafts before—literally 17 scrip
ts by 12 different writers. Fortunately, there was a treatment done that had the sketched-out story of what the movie should be. That was the one done by Shannon and Swift. I read the treatment and felt, "Well, there are some problems here, but it looks pretty good. Let's see what we get when the script comes in." And we did get a really good script.
MARK SWIFT:
Ultimately, it came down to Bob Shaye. Sometimes, it's dangerous when anybody at a studio takes a personal interest in your project, but in this case it was a good thing because he's a horror fan. Although, in his mind, he'd also been burned before. Wes Craven convinced him to do New Nightmare, and it didn't turn out well financially, at least in terms of domestic box office. But Bob still got behind us and made Freddy vs. Jason happen.
Finally, Freddy vs. Jason had a green-lit script and an energized new executive to champion it. Now all it needed was a director. The studio wanted someone who would respect the legacy of both the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises, while at the same time bring a fresh new sensibility and visual style to this most unique—and decidedly American—horror hybrid. Ironically, they would have to go halfway around the world to find their man.
STOKELY CHAFFIN:
I had made the foolish proposition to every agency in town that I would agree to meet any director who wanted to come in for Freddy vs. Jason. I probably took 60 meetings with directors of all kinds, from music video to commercial directors to people who had made only one feature or a short. The problem we had was that there were people who loved the characters and knew everything about the movies and had seen all of them 15 times, but didn't have the experience. And then there were people who had the experience, but were kind of like, "Yeah, I think I saw one back in the theater way back when." And we're like, "What are you doing here? Why would you want to take this on if you don't care about these characters?"
Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Enhanced Edition) Page 82
