Freddy vs Jason Vs Ash?! Sometimes a horror movie is just to horrific (or brilliant) to ever see the light of day...
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00:00 Hollywood is full of horror movies, but not every film makes its way to the theaters.
00:04 Just ask Guillermo del Toro. Sometimes a cancelled project ends up in the scrap heap due to budgetary
00:09 concerns or a shoddy script, but there's always those select few that are simply way too horrific
00:14 to get studio approval. Whatever the reason, some of the genre's greatest writers and directors
00:19 failed to get their projects made, despite having ideas that would have scared us senseless for
00:23 years to come. Pour one out for these movies that never were my friends, for we barely knew them.
00:29 I am The Fleeting Potential of Ash from What Culture, and these are the 10 greatest horror
00:34 movies never made. 10. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash
00:39 The horror slasher film genre is never hurting for sequels, but the occasional crossover is a
00:44 rare breed. As if the gods themselves were answering fans' prayers, however, 2003 saw the
00:50 release of Freddy vs. Jason, and the age-old debate of which immortal, homicidal maniac would win in
00:55 a fight was finally settled. Mostly, anyway. In the ashes of that conflict arose talk of
01:01 bringing back another classic horror franchise, and mixing it with the likes of Nightmare on Elm
01:05 Street and Friday the 13th. But sadly, the world never got to see Ash Williams strap on his trusty
01:11 chainsaw, pick up his boomstick, and take on two of horror's most iconic villains.
01:16 The film came close to happening after producer Jeff Katz offered up a treatment,
01:20 but thanks to Sam Raimi's refusal to extend the film rights to his character at New Line Cinema,
01:25 Ash never got a chance to kill Hollywood's baddies with epic one-liners. There is some
01:29 night at the end of this tunnel, though. The concept was of course turned into a six-issue
01:33 comic series appropriately titled Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. Gotta be thankful for the small wins.
01:39 9. Halloween - Michael Myers vs. Pinhead
01:43 Another potential horror movie crossover the world never got to see would have pitted Haddonfield's
01:48 scourge Michael Myers against Pinhead in a Halloween/Hellraiser mashup the likes of Hell
01:54 I've Never Seen. Unfortunately, it didn't get made. But it came closer than most.
01:59 Clive Barker, the man who bought us Hellraiser in the first place, got busy writing the script,
02:03 as incidentally, the only way John Carpenter would get involved was if the two could collaborate.
02:08 This was serious business. Both creators were working together to bring their creations to
02:12 life so they could duke it out on the big screen. The project hit a snag, though,
02:16 when polling from the fans indicated it wouldn't work well. The creators were working on a
02:20 psychological horror movie with one of the genre's great slasher villains, and fans didn't like the
02:25 idea. With little fan support, the producer pulled out and the creators were forced to move on to
02:30 other projects. Sadly, this one never made it to comic book form, and the script has never been
02:35 leaked. 8. Inferno - Henri-Georges Clouseau
02:39 Henri-Georges Clouseau was one of France's premier psychological thriller directors,
02:42 and his 1955 film Les Déaboliques remains one of the best examples in the genre. By 1964,
02:48 however, his career was somewhat waning, so he began working on Inferno as a sort of
02:53 "career rejuvenation." The film was set to depict an intensely jealous relationship between a
02:58 husband and wife with allusions to Dante's Inferno, but the movie remains Clouseau's only unfinished
03:03 work. Even with a generous budget from Columbia Pictures and hours of footage shot in both color
03:08 and black and white, the movie was never completed. Filming in the extreme heat of the
03:13 Cantal region of France slowed production and made a lot of people working on the set sick,
03:17 which delayed filming. Clouseau and the film's lead actor didn't get along, and a near-fatal
03:21 heart attack hospitalized Clouseau for weeks. By the time the director left the hospital,
03:26 the film was scrapped. But it can actually still be seen. Sort of. In 2009, several scenes shot
03:33 from 15 hours of footage were cut into a documentary about the project, which was
03:37 presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival that year. Small wins, remember?
03:42 7. Worst Case Scenario
03:44 Zombie movies were once big business thanks to franchises like The Walking Dead and Resident
03:49 Evil, and they were in their prime back in 2004 when Worst Case Scenario entered into development.
03:55 The project came out of the Netherlands and featured Nazi zombies, which, as anyone who's
03:59 played Call of Duty Zombie Mode can tell you, is a frightful prospect, and on the nose for the title.
04:04 The movie began gaining traction in 2006 when a couple of trailers were thrown online to entice
04:09 investors, but sadly, the movie failed to raise enough cash to get off the ground.
04:13 It is still possible to see the trailers and pique your interest,
04:17 but the odds of this movie ever being made are pretty much nil.
04:20 The film's director moved on to other projects and even incorporated some of the same elements
04:24 planned for Worst Case Scenario into 2013's Frankenstein's Army instead,
04:29 which means it has basically been sucked dry.
04:31 6. Night Skies
04:34 Steven Spielberg has directed and produced some of the greatest movies ever made,
04:38 which is why a project based on a real-life account of a family terrorized by aliens
04:42 sounds like an idea too good to ever pass up.
04:45 Night Skies, then, was a shoo-in, and ready to launch with Spielberg attached as producer
04:49 and Tobey Hooper tapped to direct, but it never ended up seeing the light of day.
04:53 Spielberg's involvement moved all over the place during the project thanks to the studio's desire
04:57 to have a sequel made for close encounters of the third kind first and foremost.
05:02 Instead of just making Night Skies in this mold, though,
05:04 the ideas were adapted into other projects as he gained other inspiration that suited
05:08 the concepts better. This led him to use it as inspiration for another film, E.T. the Extra
05:13 Terrestrial. He later lent elements of Night Skies to other films he produced,
05:17 including Poltergeist and Gremlins, both of which were similar in tone to what Night Skies
05:22 might have been. If you're wondering about Night Skies ever being made, then
05:26 you can absolutely forget about it. The source material has been used up and adapted into so
05:30 many films, there is no chance Spielberg will make the original concept into one he himself heads up.
05:36 5. Resident Evil
05:37 Yes, there is a film adaptation of the Resident Evil game franchise. Six, actually, but those
05:43 movies weren't necessarily the films fans were hoping for. Originally, Resident Evil was on the
05:47 line to be adapted by none other than George A. Romero, the grandfather of the zombie movie sub-genre.
05:54 Having Romero on the project made a lot of sense, as his film, Night of the Living Dead,
05:58 was a direct inspiration for the game. Unfortunately, he wanted to keep the film's
06:02 focus on zombies and make it less about the other creatures in the franchise, which Capcom
06:06 really hated for some reason. Capcom threw out his script, and Romero was fired from the project
06:11 as both writer and director. The films we got were closer to Capcom's interests, but they did stray
06:16 somewhat from the game's origin story, unlike Romero's script. The franchise was given the
06:20 green light for a reboot in 2017, but sadly, we won't see Romero's involvement as he passed away
06:26 that same year. Alien 3 is another movie that made its way to theaters, but not as it was
06:33 originally conceived. The first draft of the film was penned by none other than the father of
06:37 cyberpunk, William Gibson. Gibson's plan for the film featured Hickson Bishop with Ellen Ripley
06:43 comatose the whole time. Not only was Ripley out of action, Gibson introduced the concept of a
06:47 contagion that turned humans into xenomorphs. The action-packed script did have some appeal,
06:52 but the producers absolutely hated it. They got rid of Gibson's draft and moved on with
06:57 a David Fincher version that made it to theaters in the end. The likelihood of ever seeing this
07:01 script made into a film is zero. The franchise moved on to make additional movies, prequel films,
07:06 and crossovers with the Predator franchise, and also stopped Neil Blomkamp's Alien 5 from ever
07:12 fixing the sins of the Alien 3 we got along the way.
07:14 3. Torso
07:16 Brian Michael Bendis' work in comics has gotten a lot of love from Hollywood,
07:20 but an adaptation of his graphic novel Torso never made it to film. A project based on the
07:25 book was greenlit by Paramount in 2006 with David Fincher attached to direct,
07:29 but production never got off the ground. After three years of nothing happening,
07:34 the film rights reverted back to Bendis and production was dead on arrival.
07:37 The story followed Eliot Ness' real-life pursuit of the Cleveland serial killer,
07:41 and interest may have simply waned due to other projects. It isn't known exactly whether the
07:46 film never made it into production, but the problem may have been due to Fincher's film,
07:50 Zodiac, which was similar in story and tone to Torso. Fincher went on to make huge hits for the
07:55 studio and moved away from the likes of Torso, but it may not be completely dead.
07:59 In 2013, David Lowery was attached to direct an adaptation, but he went on to film Pete's Dragon
08:05 and Peter Pan, suggesting he too has moved away from serial killer psychological horror movies
08:10 and into movies about men named Peter. And the film still remains unmade,
08:14 despite the odd rumbling here and there.
08:16 2. I Am Legend
08:18 I Am Legend was made into a film in 2007, starring Will Smith. But that was far from
08:22 the first time the book was made into a movie. The plot of Richard Matheson's sci-fi horror novel
08:27 was adapted into four films since it was published in 1954. But the one that was never made had sci-fi
08:32 legend Ridley Scott attached to write and direct. The project was started in 1995 at Warner Bros.
08:38 Studios, with Arnold Schwarzenegger cast in the lead role. Concerns about ballooning budget,
08:43 $100 million and growing, to be precise, Schwarzenegger's ability to tentpole a project,
08:48 and Scott's dark, edgy script featuring almost no dialogue,
08:52 forced the studio executives to reconsider and pull the project from development.
08:56 There is virtually no chance they would reboot I Am Legend with Scott's involvement in any way
09:00 similar to his original vision, especially since it's already made a heap at the box office in
09:05 another form.
09:06 1. Kaleidoscope
09:08 Alfred Hitchcock is perhaps the greatest director to ever set psychological thrillers and horror to
09:12 film. But even he couldn't get everything by studio executives. In 1964, he conceived of a
09:18 prequel to his '42 film Shadow of a Doubt, for which he shot only an hour of silent test footage.
09:23 The film followed the crazed exploits of a bodybuilder who enjoyed every type of heinous act.
09:28 It was to be shot with handheld cameras in a first-person point of view,
09:32 a method of filming that didn't become popular until the found-footage craze four decades later.
09:37 MCA cancelled the project almost immediately after only seeing the test footage. The studio
09:42 found the lead character to be unlikable and overall the content far too extreme for their
09:46 taste. It's safe to say Kaleidoscope will never be made now that Hitchcock has passed away and
09:50 there is very little original footage remaining. He did use some elements from the script in his
09:55 1972 film Frenzy, but that makes it even more unlikely the original concept can come out as
10:00 its own treat at this point. Alas, we're just gonna have to dream real hard about this one.
10:05 And that's our list. Which of these movies would you most want to see if by the grace of all things
10:10 unholy, one of them did actually get made? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.
10:15 I've been Ash over on social media @AshMillman and this has been WhatCulture. Don't forget to
10:20 like, share, subscribe, and head on over to WhatCulture Horror for some more spooky content.
10:26 Thanks for watching!