5 Canceled Horror Movies
It’s almost Halloween! October is a spooky season where people watch horror movies. I thought I would share 5 horror movies that were canceled. Let’s get started!
Halloween 3D: We’re going to kick it off by talking about one of the more iconic horror movie franchises of all time, Halloween with Michael Myers. There’s been 13 Halloween movies over the years, it wrapped up the franchise with Halloween Ends just last year. But there was originally going to be a 14th film called Halloween Returns. A common troop amongst horror was making 3D films in the franchise. Friday the 13th got a 3D sequel, My Bloody Valentine got a sequel that was released in 3D. The studio wanted to make a Halloween sequel that was in 3D, so they talked with Steve Miner and Patrick Lussier who directed the two movies I just mentioned. In September 2009 Todd Farmer turned in the first draft of the script. Production stopped because the production studio, The Weinstein Company ran out of money. Lussier and Miner were busy filming another movie called Drive Angry. In June 2011 the movie was given an October 2012 release date. At this same time the writers and director they had attached left so they had no people attached to the project at the moment. In March 2012 the film was taken off the release schedule with no production in sight. Lussier said that he was proud of the script he wrote and said it went back that it felt like Carpenter’s original film. Then in May 2014 it was confirmed the film was back and moving forward with production. Obviously, this never film came to be and we then got Halloween (2018) a direct follow up to the original 1978 with Jamie Lee Curtis returning as Laurie Strode that launched a trilogy of movies that ended in 2022.
A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Dream Lover: A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is one of the most iconic horror movie franchises of all time. Freddy Kruger is one of the most iconic horror villains of all time. The franchise has several movies, there’s 5 in the original run of films. Then they did Freddy’s Dead and then a couple more of that. But they had plans to do one in between A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and Freddy’s Dead. This one would have been called A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Dream Lover and the director attached to the film was Peter Jackson. Yes, Peter Jackson who directed Lord of the Rings was going to direct a film in this franchise. The first four films in the franchise were all box office hits and printing money for the studio. However, The Dream Child did disappoint at the box office and caused the studio to rethink this franchise. The studio was trying to think of ways to end the franchise, they wanted to do one more movie to close things out. The studio began meeting with writers to plan the final film, they talked with Peter Jackson who was still a fairly new director. He directed two New Zealand films called Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, no budget films. New Line Cinemas (the studio behind the franchise) saw those films and liked what they saw, so Peter Jackson started working on a script for the film. He was co-writing the script with Danny Mulheron who also co-wrote the script for Meet the Feebles. Basically it was going to be this meta film that pre-dates Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and Scream. Where the town wasn’t taking Freddy Krueger seriously anymore, kind of how the audience wasn’t taking the character seriously anymore. Jackson took a lot of inspiration from A Clockwork Orange to make this film. I guess this movie was going to focus a lot on the dream world. Obviously, this film never happened; the studio passed on Jackson’s idea. But they liked his creativity and energy that is where he got the job to direct The Lord of the Rings. At the same time an in-house producer named Michael De Luca was writing a script for Freddy’s Dead, that movie ended up happening however.
Michael Myers vs Pinhead: Dimension is a film studio that owned the rights to both Halloween and Hellraiser franchises. The films were printing the studios money, so they wanted to try and make more movies. Michael Myers and Halloween of course being one of the most iconic horror franchises of all time. Hellraiser with Pinhead, not as iconic but still has some classics of the genre. Dave Parker who directed The Dead Hate the Living and The Hills Run Read pitched an idea for a Michael Myers vs Pinhead movie. During the pitch, he made a trailer that showed footage from previous Halloween and Hellraiser movies to try to help get his point across, he wanted the title to be called HELLOWEEN. He pitched the idea that Pinhead is what turned Michael Myers into “The Shape”, and how Pinhead would have been in control of the cold open from Halloween (1978). The studio rejected Parker’s idea for the film, they didn’t like it and didn’t think it would work all that well. About 8 years later New Line Cinema put out Freddy vs Jason which combined the two horror icons into one movie, and it was a box office hit. Apparently early projections were saying it was going to bomb at the box office. It didn’t, it actually stayed #1 at the box office for its first two weekends. An early draft of the script had Pinhead having a cameo in the film. Since Pinhead was owned by Dimension and Freddy vs Jason was owned by New Line Cinema, they couldn’t cut a deal to make it happen. So, Michael Myears and Pinhead never got to fight one another.
Freddy vs Jason vs Ash: As I just mentioned in 2003 New Line Cinema put out a horror crossover film that was titled Freddy vs Jason. It was a hit at the box office grossing almost $120 million on a $30 million budget. There was an idea for a sequel where it was going to be Freddy Kruger vs Jason for Ash Williams from The Evil Dead. There’s multiple big reasons as to why this film never came to be. The big one being is the studios couldn’t decide on a movie that made sense. In the original film, Jason beats Freddy (spoiler alert, I haven’t seen the film). In the sequel basically Ash was going to beat both Freddy and Jason. It sounds like the studio and producers behind Evil Dead had more say in the script then New Line Cinema did with Freddy and Jason. Robert Enguland didn’t like the idea of Freddy being defeated twice, he thought it would cheapen the character if that was to happen. Bruce Campbell wasn’t interested in the idea of doing a crossover, plus none of the actors wanted to do it. The original film cost $30 million, this movie was going to have a large budget; the studio didn’t want to pay that much money for this movie. The film wasn’t making any progress so the studio scrapped the idea and turned it into a comic book run that ran in late 2007 into 2008.
The Dark Universe: Back in 2017 Tom Cruise released a new summer horror film titled The Mummy. The film was supposed to start this universe of universal monsters like The Mummy, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, all of those classic horror characters. There was supposed to be a universe with all of those creatures inside of them. The film came out tanked at the box office, it has a 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Many people consider it to be the weakest film of Cruise’s career. The idea of this universe came to be after the MCU had taken off and been this dominant force at the box office. Universal wanted to do the same thing Alex Kurtzman and Chris Morgan were going to oversee this universe. In 2014, there was a movie that came out that was titled Dracula Untold with Luke Evans starring in it. There were rumors that The Mummy (2017) reshot its ending to bring Luke Evans’ character into this franchise, this didn’t happen. Apparently Charles Dance was also rumored to appear in The Mummy who would be the Nick Fury of this universe. They even hired several actors for characters in this universe. Russell Crowe was cast as Dr. Jeckel who was also in The Mummy (2017) and they would have been a Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde film. Johnny Depp was cast as The Invisible Man. Javier Bardem and Angelina Jolie were going to star in The Bride of Frankenstein movie. But after The Mummy (2017) came out and didn’t do enough for the studio to do anymore with it, the plans were canceled.
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