EXCLUSIVE: MICHAEL, MEET PINHEAD
8.20.03
By Ryan Rotten
Contributing Sources:
With Krueger and Vorhees wrastlin' their way towards the $50 million mark at the box office, studios are now (predictably) looking to pit their own boogeymen against each other in an all-out big screen brawl. Fox is currently in prep on Aliens vs. Predator and New Line is flirting with the idea of drawing Ash into the next Freddy vs. Jason fray (contrary to what Campbell says, this concept is still in New Line's court and most likely hasn't reached Bruce's agent yet).
One of the most obvious match-ups, not in logic but one that avoids messy studio rights, is a Michael Myers vs. Pinhead flick. Both franchises are beating a dead horse to the point of exhaustion under the umbrella of Dimension Films - a company who knows the power of the dollar and how to unabashedly exploit what properties they have in their vaults.
It sounds as if butcher knife will meet chain sooner than you think. Creature-Corner has learned today from a source inside Dimension that development execs are "scrambling" to find writers to pen a Myers vs. Pinhead conflict. No joke.
We can't foretell how The Shape will meet our favorite angel from Hell, but we do recall House of the Dead scribe, Dave Parker, telling the Corner that he once pitched the concept of a Myers/Pinhead fracas – called Helloween - to then-development exec Jeff Kurtz at Dimension. So we dropped this The Dead Hate the Living! director a line to hear what he thought about this bit o' news and talk to him about his pitch...
"I had pitched, unsuccessfully Freddy vs Jason to a guy named Ross Hammer at Sean Cunningham's company around '94 or early '95." Parker explains to the Corner. "After that didn't go well, I started think about what other franchises were at other studios. It was a no-brainer to see that Dimension had both the Halloween and Hellraiser franchises, so I put together a trailer using footage from the Halloween movies, including Halloween 6 which was just getting ready to come out, and the Hellraiser movies 1 thru 4. I did new narration [for the trailer] and I called the idea Helloween - I know not the most ground breaking idea and will probably induce many groans."
While the trailer and mock poster (pictured) impressed the likes of Scott Spiegel (who was directing From Dusk Til Dawn 2 at the time), Clive Barker and others, Dimension eventually declined the project even though Parker "stayed true to the best elements of Halloween and returned Hellraiser back to the mythology that Clive Barker and Pete Atkins established." The rejection isn't going to discourage Parker from trying again. "I went the extra mile putting this trailer together, spending money to finish it, and I hope that they can at least meet with me and take me as seriously as any other writer that they would meet with."
8.20.03
By Ryan Rotten
Contributing Sources:
With Krueger and Vorhees wrastlin' their way towards the $50 million mark at the box office, studios are now (predictably) looking to pit their own boogeymen against each other in an all-out big screen brawl. Fox is currently in prep on Aliens vs. Predator and New Line is flirting with the idea of drawing Ash into the next Freddy vs. Jason fray (contrary to what Campbell says, this concept is still in New Line's court and most likely hasn't reached Bruce's agent yet).
One of the most obvious match-ups, not in logic but one that avoids messy studio rights, is a Michael Myers vs. Pinhead flick. Both franchises are beating a dead horse to the point of exhaustion under the umbrella of Dimension Films - a company who knows the power of the dollar and how to unabashedly exploit what properties they have in their vaults.
It sounds as if butcher knife will meet chain sooner than you think. Creature-Corner has learned today from a source inside Dimension that development execs are "scrambling" to find writers to pen a Myers vs. Pinhead conflict. No joke.
We can't foretell how The Shape will meet our favorite angel from Hell, but we do recall House of the Dead scribe, Dave Parker, telling the Corner that he once pitched the concept of a Myers/Pinhead fracas – called Helloween - to then-development exec Jeff Kurtz at Dimension. So we dropped this The Dead Hate the Living! director a line to hear what he thought about this bit o' news and talk to him about his pitch...
"I had pitched, unsuccessfully Freddy vs Jason to a guy named Ross Hammer at Sean Cunningham's company around '94 or early '95." Parker explains to the Corner. "After that didn't go well, I started think about what other franchises were at other studios. It was a no-brainer to see that Dimension had both the Halloween and Hellraiser franchises, so I put together a trailer using footage from the Halloween movies, including Halloween 6 which was just getting ready to come out, and the Hellraiser movies 1 thru 4. I did new narration [for the trailer] and I called the idea Helloween - I know not the most ground breaking idea and will probably induce many groans."
While the trailer and mock poster (pictured) impressed the likes of Scott Spiegel (who was directing From Dusk Til Dawn 2 at the time), Clive Barker and others, Dimension eventually declined the project even though Parker "stayed true to the best elements of Halloween and returned Hellraiser back to the mythology that Clive Barker and Pete Atkins established." The rejection isn't going to discourage Parker from trying again. "I went the extra mile putting this trailer together, spending money to finish it, and I hope that they can at least meet with me and take me as seriously as any other writer that they would meet with."
