There is something borderline addicting about the jump scares and the nerve-wracking suspense that a horror picture delivers at you, and you can not help but want more, even if you know it will keep you awake for several nights. The first time you see a classic horror film like John Carpenter’s Halloween or Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, it is a bizarre experience, allowing you to feel the terror that anonymity and malevolent intentions can engender in real-time.
Regrettably, the sequels are not in the same league. After all, once Hollywood discovers a great formula and a ready audience, it floods the market with many prequels, sequels, and spin-offs that gradually erode the mystery that made the initial picture so captivating to watch. By the time Saw 5 was released, the series had degraded into pain porn, a problem that most horror franchises face while trying to keep their market appeal “fresh.”
But every now and then, a really intriguing sequel idea emerges, causing horror forums to erupt in excitement before being abruptly shelved because big-shot executives believed it “would not work.” Fortunately for you, we enjoy a good “what if” scenario and have compiled a list of some of the most egregious missed opportunities in horror history, some of which may have significantly rejuvenated their respective franchises. Here are ten horror films that were canceled but would have been good to watch.
Hellraiser vs. Halloween
This will sound weird in the crossover-riddled world that we live in today, but back in the 90s, studios weren’t too keen on sharing their intellectual property. Crossover movies just didn’t seem to appeal to studio higher-ups and several pitches were rejected around ’94 and ’95 to bring together some of the most-recognizable franchises owned by Dimension Films.
A sliver of hope opened up for the Horror Cinematic Universe in 2003 with the runaway success of Freddy vs Jason, and it was during that short-lived mash-up sensation period that director Dave Parker’s suggestions started being taken a bit more seriously. See, Freddy vs Jason was one of those rejected pitches that we mentioned before, and after spending a decade in developmental hell, it became a surprise hit at the box office.
And so, events were put into motion to produce one of the other pitches that Parker had made; this time, concerning the Halloween &Hellraiser franchises. Dubbed Halloween, it would have changed Michael’s backstory to align it with Hellraiser lore. Before killing his sister, a young Myers received the Lament Configuration from a stranger while trick-or-treating and got possessed by the Lord of the Dead in the process.
This is why he has a strong desire to kill and it also explains why he seemingly cannot die. Set during Halloween, the movie would have followed the events surrounding a family that finds that cursed puzzle box in the Myers house which sets this epic confrontation into motion, with the final third taking place in Hell.
Apparently, Myers was going to be converted into a Cenobite himself, a la Dr.Chanard from Hellbound: Hellraiser II. His mask would’ve replaced his facial skin and his arms would’ve gotten the Edward Scissorhands treatment, which would admittedly have been a kickass character design.
It’s just unfortunate that Halloween producer Moustapha Akkad didn’t see promise in the concept and nixed it, even after both Clive Barker and John Carpenter had agreed to work on the project; a collaboration that would’ve shaken the horror world to its core. Though the recent revival of both franchises holds great promise for them individually, we can’t help but think about what could have been.
Neill Blomkamp’s Alien 5
There was a time when all Neill Blomkamp would talk about was the Alien movie he really, really wanted to make. Seriously, it was hard to find a press junket where he didn’t gush about wanting to give the iconic franchise the direction he felt it deserved, and after he posted some concept art for his vision to his Instagram account, it was all that the fans could talk about.
Sigourney Weaver herself was excited about the project; she had rejected at least one Alien-related sequel script from its creator, Ridley Scott, so her agreeing to star in Neill’s version was a big positive for the filmmaker’s ambitions. Since then, two prequel films have been released, and it doesn’t look like we’re gonna get to see Blomkamp’sdreams come to life anytime soon either.
It’s not the director’s fault; if anything, the reason we’re not getting Alien 5 is that Fox simply seems to have “lost interest”. At one point, there were 2 Alien films being developed by Fox; Scott’s prequel Prometheus, and Blomkamp’sAlien 5, which was put “on hold” after the former’s box office success.
And after 2017’s Alien: Covenant, it became evident that it was never coming out, a fact that Blomkamp confirmed in a 2021 interview. This is a shame because, on paper, it sounds like it had the potential to give the series a much-needed course correction. Blomkamp’sAlien sequel would have retconned the events of the 3rd and 4th films, picking up directly after the ending of 1986’s Aliens with its focus being on transitioning Newt into the lead role and giving Weaver’s Ellen Ripley a deserving farewell.
Based on the visuals we’ve seen so far, it looks like this movie was going to resolve a lot of plot threads that have intrigued Alien fans over the years in one go. An Engineer spaceship was spotted currently under scrutiny, we see Hicks with a badly-scarred face, a mesmerized Ripley talking to an alien life-form, and a grotesque, multi-limbed Xenomorph Queen who could have been the crowning achievement of the franchise’s special effects team. One image shows Ripley wearing what looks like a Xenomorph’s skin as a biomechanical armor, which is just all kinds of badass if you ask us. Too bad we’re never gonna see her wear it.
Peter Jackson’s Nightmare On Elm Street 6
When he’s not busy breathing life into Middle Earth or filming zany cameos for his many productions, Peter Jackson can be found dabbling in horror films. That might be surprising to some of you, but the man actually loves the genre, having broken into the mainstream with a psychological thriller in 1994’s Heavenly Creatures.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that one of Jackson’s scripts was in contention for being adapted into the sixth installment of Wes Craven’s genre-defining slasher film Nightmare on Elm Street. The only problem was, by this point the franchise had become something of a parody of itself. By the time the 5thmovie came around, Freddy Krueger seemed more like a comic book character than the surreal menace from Wes Craven’s original film, which is probably why it was also the worst-performing film in the franchise at the time.
Desperate to revamp its success and having heard of Jackson’s reputation from his feature-length debut Bad Taste, New Line gave the then-unknown director a chance to potentially shape the series’ foreseeable future. Of course, things didn’t turn out as Jackson might have hoped, and New Line instead opted to put out the ludicrously OTT Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. But if they had, it would have taken Freddy on a metaphorical and literal journey of self-discovery.
Titled A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Lover, the movie was going to be a meta take on Freddy’s on-screen exploits that would bleed into his character progression. In the film, it would be revealed that the residents of Springwood are no longer scared of Krueger; children now take sleeping pills to enter the dreamscape and bully poor, powerless Freddy.
The main focus of the film would then see the surrealist serial killer “getting his own back” by inspiring fear in the residents of Springwood once more and resuming his nightmarish killing spree. Even though he would have still been defeated at the end of the day, Jackson’s script would have given Springwood residents the chance to reclaim their dreams in future installments, injecting the franchise with a dose of much-needed freshness and a new perspective. Its poetic irony that the only time Craven returned to helm a Nightmare project was to perfect the meta-jibes he’d take on horror as a whole with his next classic, Scream.
Hellraiser: Hellfire
Can we just preface this by saying that we absolutely cannot wait any longer for Hulu’s re-boot of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser to hit our screens? A big reason for this is the gross mistreatment the franchise received in the form of 6 continuous direct-to-DVD sequels, most of which just degraded the masterpiece that was Barker’s original film. We know that any film that is going straight to video is not going to be an instant classic, but dammit, this one felt personal.
Not just because Doug Bradley put in a career-defining performance as Pinhead for 8 entire films, but also because Hellraiserhas one of the most innovative premises of any horror franchise in existence. The Cenobites embody the living, breathing sensation of terror: human beings transformed into demons after enduring eons of torture to the point they can’t differentiate between pain and pleasure and desire.
Their unique existence and the story surrounding them is what made the first two films such a surreal experience, and while the 3rd film tried to keep the momentum going, any hopes of saving the franchise from a CD-shaped fate evaporated after the disastrous performance of Hellraiser IV: Bloodline.
The story could have been very different had Stephen Jonesgotten the chance to translate his script to the big screen. Jones wanted to take the franchise back to its roots while creating a brand new story that upped the stakes. So he worked with Michael Marshall Smith and came up with something that at least on paper, sounds genuinely interesting.
Hellraiser: Hellfire would have been focused around uber-wealthy businessman and cult leader Jack Credence. Credence made a deal with Pinhead in the 80s to gain immense power and influence in the real world, but in this film, he would attempt to take it over entirely by using his abilities and a little help from his diamond-shaped God.
Several previous characters were set to make comebacks and cameos including Ashley Laurence’s Kirsty Cotton; the original leading protagonist of the franchise. The end-game of the film involved the city of London turning into a massive Lament Configuration, summoning Leviathan himself to the real world.
Obviously, all these special effects would have cost a lot of money; money that the eventual budget of $2 million dollars fell spectacularly short of. Instead, we got the quasi-detective thriller that was Hellraiser: Inferno, and as JoBlo.com summed it up, “the film’s biggest flaw is calling itself Hellraiser.” Here’s hoping David S. Goyer does a better job.
Freddy Vs. Jason Vs. Ash
All isn’t lost for fans who wanted this crossover to happen at any cost, as Freddy, Jason &Ash have clashed on the pages of comic books twice over. But a live-action feature film starring some of horror’s most iconic characters is nothing but a pipe dream at this point, mostly because of legal disputes surrounding each franchise’s IP; especially Friday the 13th.
Do you know how Tom Holland borderline begged Sony and Marvel to let Spidey back into the MCU? Well, let’s just say no amount of groveling is going to change Victor Miller’s mind about letting Jason Voorhees don his infamous hockey mask again. You see, sharing property isn’t something most major studios are keen on; we’ve already talked about the decade-long developmental hell that was Freddy vs Jason.
But on top of that, Sean S. Cunningham and Miller- the producer and scriptwriter for Friday the 13threspectively- became embroiled in a bitter legal feud that saw them battle it out for the film’s rights for almost 13 years. Seeing as Miller holds the rights to Jason’s existence right now, it’s going to take a miracle to cast him for the film.
And even that might not be enough because if you ask Bruce Campbell and Robert Englund, they’ve “retired” from playing their iconic characters; 74-year-old Englund cited old age as the reason for his inability to return as Freddy Krueger, while Campbell said that the short-lived Ash vs Evil Dead TV series was his last tryst with the character and besides, there was only so much a franchise could do before becoming “creatively bankrupt”.
So we’re gonna have to make do with the plot details and our personal imagination if we want to ever see this film. The movie would have seen Freddy Krueger somehow control Jason’s soul with the Necronomicon while Ash tries to retrieve the book and stop the duo he thinks are actually Deadites.
It’s a goofy little story that would play out sort of like a murder mystery, but if you can’t go through the trouble of thinking about it, just pick up the 6-issue limited series published by WildStorm Comics in 2007-to 08.
You’re Next 2
2011’s You’re Next was a delightful oddity that struck a chord with slasher and comedy fans alike and managed to garner significant fanfare despite its relatively quiet release. A lot of that has to do with the way the movie was conceptualized and executed. Director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett took one of the most tried-and-tested slasher premises and flipped it on its head by turning all the gore into laughter fodder in the second half of the film.
The story follows a family dinner in an isolated cabin that comes under attack by masked assailants looking to eliminate everyone, or so it seems at first. Wingard and Barrett created one of the most bad-ass Final Girls to ever grace a slasher flick in the survivalist Erin who turns the tables on her attackers by luring them into death traps that would make an adult Kevin McCallister very proud indeed.
Their cast of improv actors did a tremendous job of undercutting the movie’s serious visual tone with some exceptional dark humor that made us crack up despite ourselves. For a production with a budget of $1 million, it raked in a tidy profit by earning almost $27 million at the box office, a phenomenon that usually signals the birth of yet another blood-soaked horror franchise.
So it was a surprise when Wingard and Barrett revealed they had no plans to make a sequel, and the rationale behind it was actually measured for once. In an interview with IndieWire, Barrett said, “…when You’re Next coming out, it was like, oh okay that’s a modest success. But not enough that we had to worry about a sequel.”
$27 million is a good earning figure for an independent production, but You’re Next wasn’t a blockbuster cash cow they could milk and they knew that when they went into it. In fact, the original ending of the first film would have seen Erin die, but that was changed to a bleak, ambiguous joke that left room for interpretation. Still, that’s not to say they didn’t have an idea of where the sequel would go.
You’re Next 2 would have seen Erin get arrested for the murders she committed. While being transported to a prison facility, her van is attacked by Lamb Mask who has managed to survive the stabbing and is out for revenge. The film’s big action set-pieces would have taken place in a booby-trapped meth lab, which sounds deliciously brutal. Too bad we’re never gonna get to see it.
The Last House on the Left II
Considering how brutal and graphic the first installment was, perhaps it’s for the best that this film never gets a sequel. In 2022, we know Wes Craven as one of the most important figureheads of the horror genre, but in 1972, his career almost came to an end before it ever took off; thanks to the vicious, blood-soaked imagery that was a staple of his directorial debut.
Produced by Sean S. Cunningham, The Last House on the Left was the kind of movie grindhouse enthusiasts loved to see: visceral, violent, and filled with visuals that focused more on shock-and-awe than actual story progression. It tells the harrowing tale of two teenagers, Mari and Phyllis, who are headed to a rock concert and try to score some marijuana in the city but end up getting kidnapped and violently assaulted by a family of psychotic killers led by David Hess’ Krug Stillo.
Some of the acts they committed against the innocent duo were so heinous and depraved that it landed the film on Britain’s infamous “video nasties” list; Sandra Peabody would later come out with more serious allegations of actual abuse taking place on set, which leaves the entire production mired in repulsive controversy despite its $3.1 million earnings.
But you know the old adage; controversy creates cash, and the now-defunct Vestron Pictures actually commissioned a sequel for the film in the 80s with Danny Steinmann set to write and direct it. Before Steinmann was attached to the project, Craven and Cunningham had had a go at a sequel idea, wanting to place the gang in literal Hell and put them in Orpheus’ shoes; this was a dud though, and so the studio got Steinmann on board.
Danny’s vision would have taken a page out of Friday the 13th’s book and set the film in a summer camp, explaining that Krug Stillo had somehow survived being dissected in half by a chainsaw and is now terrorizing the camp-goers, “Deliverance-style”.
While we do not condone aggressive behavior against co-stars in the name of “method acting”, we’ve got to admit that it would at least be curious to see how Krug Stillo would have navigated such a scenario; if you’ve seen Deliverance, you know what we’re talking about. If David Hess and all other problematic elements were removed from the filmmaking process, we think it would’ve been a decent addition to the slasher pantheon.
Army Of Darkness 2
Sam Raimi will always be credited with bringing a certain level of gravitas and cinematic flair to superhero franchises with his seminal Spider-Man trilogy. The man has an uncanny way of weaving fiction with reality to create an experience that might not be 100% accurate but is going to be relatable at a fundamental level.
That’s why we’re so excited for Doctor Strange: Multiverse of Madness because it looks like the movie will tie up Raimi’s biggest cinematic achievement with his break-in genre; horror. Evil Dead took filmgoers by storm when it came out in 1981, thanks to its atmospheric cinematography, an exceptionally original script, and a star-making performance by frequent Raimi collaborator Bruce Campbell.
The two creatives kept raising the stakes for every subsequent film, venturing into slapstick territory with Evil Dead 2 and completing the transition from horror to horror-comedy with 1992’s Army of Darkness. Given that the film was packed to the rafters with gags, punch-lines, and unforgettable one-liners that made every theatre crowd go rabid at the time, it should’ve been a given that this zany quasi-spinoff would inevitably be given a sequel to keep those dollars pouring in.
Somehow, it took 2 full decades for Ashley Williams to resurface on our screens, and it wasn’t as a part of Army of Darkness 2, although that was the reported direction in 2013. Instead, we got the exceptional Ash vs Evil Dead TV series that was unfairly canceled after 3 short seasons. Still, if the early drafts are anything to go by, AOD2 would have taken Ash on his wackiest adventure to date.
Picking up directly after the international release ending of Army of Darkness which saw Ash wake up from a vegetative state in the distant future, AOD2 would see him go on a Sarah Connors-Esque journey, battling Terminator-like machines to yet again save humanity from the brink of extinction.
Extremely high production costs and general disinterest has guaranteed it will never happen, with Sony and TriStar opting to re-boot the franchise instead. Still, we’d give anything to watch Bruce Campbell take down those metallic bastards with his trusty handsaw, the word Groovy echoing from his lips like a battle cry, one last time.
Nick Antosca’s Friday The 13th 3D
We mentioned Jason’s legal troubles before, but he was already losing steam by the time Victor Miller came around to take his dues. Every FT13 film after the original kept raising the stakes when it came to the action and the lore surrounding Jason himself, turning him from an empathetic psychopath who was wronged as a child to the Patron Saint of Torture who cannot be killed but will kill you no matter how smart you are.
It got to the point that after Freddy vs Jason, the entire franchise was in desperate need of a reboot, which is exactly what happened with 2009’s “re-imagined” version of the original film helmed by Marcus Nispel.
However, negative reviews and Cunningham v/ Miller threw ice-cold water over any hopes of continuing the franchise thereafter, which is a shame because Nick Antosca’s Friday the 13th: 3D had the potential to bring back lapsed fans while drawing in new ones by taking the series to its roots and trimming off all the unnecessary stuff that had gathered onto the franchise’s lore over the decades.
Antosca is a budding pioneer in the horror space, having overseen production for SyFy’sexcellent anthology series Channel Zero and NBC’s MadsMikkelsen-starrer Hannibal, both of which have been received by genre die-hards with open arms. For Friday the 13th: 3D, Antosca would have taken the series back to its 80’s origin story and Camp Crystal Lake; albeit this one is situated on the opposite bank of the 1980 original.
It would have introduced a fresh cast of horny, drug-friendly teenagers for Jason to tear apart, a few years after his mother’s death, and kept all the supernatural elements of his character because Antosca enjoyed that version of his characterization the most. If the first draft of this film is anything to go by, we are outraged that this equal parts hilarious and terrifying flick never got made.
It is a genuinely exhilarating read with some exceptional zingers, a 60-minute period of classic tension-building, followed by an all-out rampage in the final third that exhibits everything that made Jason the legend he is today. Don’t believe us? Check it out yourself; it’s available online, waiting for you to join the ranks of everyone who wants it to get made, including us.
The Return Of The Killer Klowns From Outer Space In 3D
In 1988, the Chiodi Brothers wrote, directed, and produced the only film they would ever work on, and it was as if they made it for a cult audience. Nothing about a film titled Killer Klowns from Outer Space should work on anyone that is not suffering from Coulrophobia, and maybe that was the point; to make a movie so terribly wonderful that even people who have a phobia of the subject matter cannot help but laugh at its expense.
From start to finish, this OTT sleazeball of a visual experience has been tailored for grindhouse connoisseurs, and the Chiodi Brothers’ commitment to their oddball creation has to be commended. They’ve always wanted to create a TV series and a full-fledged trilogy affiliated with the franchise to explore its disturbingly clown-centric lore in gruesome detail.
The closest they got was around 2018 when a sequel was close to being commissioned after pitches and script ideas spent 30 years in developmental hell. Dubbed The Return Of The Killer Klowns From Outer Space In 3D, it would have seen Grant Cramer reprise his role as Mike Tobacco; only poor ol’ Mikey has turned into the “crazy town alcoholic” that no one believes, a la Doc Brown.
He’d then mentor a new generation of teenage heroes to take on the returning Klowns, 25 years after their first incursion to Earth. The film would’ve even seen the infamous Klownzilla make its comeback and was supposed to end with a massive explosion that would wipe out any trace of the invading aliens.
And for a very short period of time, it looked like the Chiodi brothers would see their dreams realized when Fox picked up the sequel’s script for development. However, all their hopes were firmly laid to rest when Disney acquired the company in a merger in 2019 and proceeded to cancel 200 titles in development including Return Of The Killer Klowns.
Now, the franchise’s only hope to survive is if it gets picked up by SyFy and that was an increasingly-diminishing prospect, last we heard. Still, we would definitely sink our teeth into a possible sequel featuring our favorite, prosthetic-wearing alien clowns any time of the day, so please make it happen, SyFy; we’re counting on you!