Freddy vs. Jason

Influenced by fan desire for a crossover film with a fight between Freddy and Jason, New Line and Paramount tried to make a Freddy vs. Jason movie in 1987 but could not agree on a story. When Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan failed at the box office, Sean Cunningham wanted to reacquire the rights to Friday the 13th and begin working with New Line Cinema on Freddy vs. Jason (New Line owned Nightmare on Elm Street). Paramount and New Line wanted the license to the other's character so they could control a crossover film. Negotiations on the project collapsed, and Paramount made Jason Takes Manhattan. After Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan was released in 1989, the rights reverted to Scuderi, Minasian, and Barsamianto (who sold them to New Line). Before Cunningham could begin to work on Freddy vs. Jason, Wes Craven returned to New Line to make New Nightmare. This put Freddy vs. Jason on hold, but allowed Cunningham to bring Jason back with Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday.[9] The ninth installment "turned a healthy profit".[10] Cunningham's "frustration" with the delayed development of Freddy vs. Jason led him to create Jason X to keep the series alive. Based on Jason Takes Manhattan's concept of taking Jason away from Crystal Lake, the tenth film put the titular character in space.[11] The film lost its biggest supporter with the resignation of president of production Michael De Luca. Lack of support let the finished film sit for two years before it was released on April 26, 2002. It was the series' lowest-grossing film at the domestic box office, and had the largest budget of any of the films to date.[12] New Line spent a reported $6 million on script development alone from several different writers. Cyrus Voris & Ethan Reiff were commissioned by De Luca alongside Lewis Abernathy & Sean S. Cunningham. Neither draft was well liked by the studio so Brannon Braga & Ronald D. Moore were hired to bring the project in a new direction. David J. Schow was given an offer to write the script because he just happened to walk by De Luca's office one day. David S. Goyer and James Dale Robinson both subsequently rewrote the Voris/Reiff draft.[13] Rob Bottin, known for his make-up work on The Thing and Total Recall, was selected to direct the film in 1997.[14] Mark Verheiden entered the project in the late '90s and proposed releasing the film with two different endings; one with Freddy winning and one with Jason winning.[15] Peter Briggs, Jason X writer Todd Farmer and screenwriting duo Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger were all later brought in to write for the film.[16][17] Newcomers Mark Swift & Damian Shannon were hired after delivering a pitch that De Luca was happy with. Goyer returned to the project once again in an effort to trim "every ounce of fat" from Swift & Shannon's 120 page script.[18] According to Swift and Shannon, several endings were considered for the film; one involved Pinhead of the Hellraiser franchise, but New Line did not want to secure the rights for the character.[19]

New Line, thinking that Freddy vs. Jason needed a fresh start, chose a different actor to play Jason. Cunningham disagreed with their decision, believing that Kane Hodder was the best choice for the role.[20] Although Hodder received a script for Freddy vs. Jason and met with director Ronny Yu and New Line executives, Yu and Matthew Barry felt that the role should be recast to fit Yu's image of Jason.[20] Hodder said that New Line did not give him a reason for the recasting; according to Yu, however, he wanted a taller, slower and more-deliberate Jason.[21] The role went to Ken Kirzinger, a Canadian stuntman who worked on Jason Takes Manhattan. Yu said that Kirzinger was hired because he was taller than Robert Englund, who played Freddy Krueger. Kirzinger is 6 feet 5 inches (196 cm) tall, compared to the 6-foot-3-inch (191 cm) Hodder, and Yu wanted a much taller actor than the 5-foot-9-inch (175 cm) Englund. Kirzinger believed that his experience on Part VIII (doubling for Hodder in two scenes) and his height helped him land the part.[20][21] New Line did not cast Kirzinger until they saw him on film, and his first scene was Jason walking down Elm Street.[20] Douglas Tait played Jason in a re-shot ending:

Unfortunately for me, it was the only scene I was hired to do. The test audiences were confused about the original ending, they thought Jason Ritter's character was becoming Jason [sic]. You can see it in the deleted scenes, that is why they decided to re-shoot the ending. Originally I was being considered for playing the role of Jason in the entire film. It was actually between me and Ken. When they took the film to Canada, I was out of luck. There was no way they were going to pay for my flight and hotel stay when Ken was a local. Also, Ken is older than me and he was a lot more established in the business than I was at the time ... I was on the film for a couple days. The water sequence took a lot of preparation. They realized that when I got wet, I looked too skinny in the clothes, so they had to bulk me up with pads and extra clothing so it would look like I was still big. Being with all this extra weight, one eye covered, a machete in one hand, Freddy's head in another hand, and being totally submerged in water, made that scene very difficult. Also, Ronny Yu wanted me to walk like I was walking on land. He wanted it to look like I could walk through the water without it making me rise to the surface. To do this effect, they had a rope tied under water that I held onto with my left hand (with Freddy's severed head in it also), and I held myself down on the ground so I could pull myself and walk forward.[22]

The film was released on VHS and DVD as part of New Line's Platinum Series on January 13, 2004. The DVD release contained a second disc of bonus content with audio commentary by Ronny Yu, Ken Kirzinger and Robert Englund; deleted and alternate scenes with commentary; Ill Niño's music video for "How Can I Live"; trailers and TV ads, soundtrack promotion and behind-the-scenes featurettes. The film was released on October 4, 2005 on Universal Media Disc and September 8, 2009 on Blu-ray; the Blu-ray release had the same content as the Platinum Series DVD.[23]

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 41% based on 162 reviews and an average rating of 4.98/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Fans of the two horror franchises will enjoy this showdown. But for everyone else, it's the same old slice and dice."[24] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100 based on 29 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".[25] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of B+ on an A+-to-F scale.[26]

Doug Chapman and Glenn Ennis were nominated for the Best Fire Stunt award at the Taurus World Stunt Awards 2004 for the double full-body burn and wire stunt. Chapman doubled for Robert Englund as Freddy and Ennis doubled for Ken Kirzinger as Jason in the stunt.[27] The film was also nominated for Best Horror Film at the Saturn Awards.

Black Flame published a novelization of the film on July 29, 2003.[28]