August 21: Michael Myers vs. Pinhead?!?
Creature Corner reports that following the smash success of FREDDY VS. JASON, Dimension is scrambling to line up a screenwriter for a movie that would pit HALLOWEENs Michael Myers against HELLRAISERs Pinhead. The studio owns the rights to both franchises (with direct-to-video seventh and eighth HELLRAISERs freshly in the can and a ninth HALLOWEEN in development), and theres no word yet on a storyline or how it would fit into the respective mythologies. HOUSE OF THE DEADs Dave Parker pitched such a project, titled HELLOWEEN, to Dimension a while back and hopes to meet with the execs again about it.

August 21st 2003
Helloween: This has to be one of the more silly ideas I've heard since FvJ hit big. Seems that according to Creature Corner, Dimension Films is scrambling to find a way to bring its two big 80's horror movie icons together in a duel - in other words yes its Halloween's Michael Myers vs. Hellraiser's Pinhead. This nutty idea however isn't exactly new - "House of the Dead" scribe Dave Parker once pitched a concept to Dimension involving the pair and in fact spent his own money putting together a trailer to show what it could look like - Parker may try again now it seems. Thanks to 'Johnny Butane' & 'Rotten'.

October 20th 2003
Helloween: Latest wild rumour - "Talk is hinting that shooting on the Pinhead/Michael Myers teamup flick might begin as early as Spring '04 for release next Halloween. Not only that, Clive Barker might be back to do the script"

http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=1518
Recently, Parker talked to Creature-Corner about Dimension's plans to combine the HELLRAISER and HALLOWEEN franchises FREDDY VS. JASON style, a concept he first pitched a few years ago. Dimension, which had been keeping the project under wraps, wasn't too happy about the revelation. "When I started working on this pitch, FREDDY VS. JASON was still in development hell, I think '95 or '96' it was before HALLOWEEN 6 had opened," Parker explains. "I was a big fan of FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN and HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and the other monster rallies and was like, 'Oh, God, that would be so much fun in a geeky sort of way.' So I was thinking about what other ones you could do feasibly, and obviously Dimension had Pinhead and Michael Myers. So I started thinking about how it might work and came up with a take that wasn't 100 percent true to both mythologies, but there was something there that definitely worked.

"It explained certain things about Michael Myers and why he is what he is," Parker continues, "and that led to opening the doors for Pinhead to come in. My thing was, how come Michael Myers could never die? It's obviously taking some liberties and I'm not saying this is the greatest idea ever or anything like that; I was just trying to come up with a plausible way to get these two guys together to fight. So, why does he all of a sudden go out and kill his sister in HALLOWEEN? He's trick-or-treating in a flashback and he goes up to this one house and at this time, I was really trying to tie it into everything that was put into the HALLOWEEN films. So he goes into the house and sees the guy with the black boots, who gives him the box. He opens it and the Lord of the Dead "Sam Hain" escapes from hell and takes over Michael's body because he doesn't want to be in hell. Now, Sam Hain is who the Shape is, and that's why he can't be killed.

"So, the story takes place when people try to destroy the Myers house and they find the box hidden between the walls. Of course, they open it and Pinhead shows up, and it's Halloween and it's the Myers house, so Michael shows up because there are people there and Pinhead recognizes that Michael is Sam Hain because he can feel it, which begins this whole battle in the real world. And of course, the third act takes them all to hell."

To sell the idea to Dimension, Parker didn't just come up with a pitch, but used a lot of audiovisual aids as well. "I took footage from HELLRAISER movies and HALLOWEEN movies and cut a trailer," Parker says. "Then I had a computer guy do a final piece, which was the skull pumpkin from HALLOWEEN II moving in and then Pinhead's pins emerge out of it. That was my image to sell it with. I showed this trailer to the guy who was then in charge of development at Dimension. He was like, 'That's really interesting stuff, but we're not ready to do that sort of movie at this time.' So I was like, 'OK, at least I got to show it.'

"When FREDDY VS. JASON came out," Parker continues, "after the opening weekend, I had a friend who had met with the new people at Dimension, and just made a call to see if they were interested, because FREDDY VS. JASON just made all this money. They said no,they weren't interested in doing this kind of project. The weekend went by and Monday, my friend heard that they were actually pursuing it now, but they had their own writers. That's when I called Ryan and said, 'Look, let me just plead my case here. I'd done this artwork' and I gave it to Ryan. Dimension's not ripping me off, it's a natural thing. I'm sure it crossed some peoples' minds there before. I re-called and my whole case was, 'Can't you just meet with us?' And that's what went up on Creature Corner, and Dimension supposedly got really upset and said that I would never meet on the project. I guess that's a learning curve of how to or not to pursue something. I don't think it's the greatest idea in the world, but it is an obvious one. I'm not saying I'm the only person who has the right take on this project, but I still have an affinity and a 'like' for those characters and the mythologies and no offense, I think Dimension doesn't care. They think [the franchises are] moneymaking machines, and that's what they care about. They don't care about the mythology of the HELLRAISER series, and that's what made it interesting. Those movies went downhill once they got rid of any involvement with Clive and Pete Atkins. Pete had a sensibility that made those first couple of sequels at least feel like HELLRAISER movies. They don't even feel like HELLRAISER movies now. They feel like JACOB'S LADDER and they're just throwing Pinhead in after the fact. I mean, I think the HELLRAISER comic books found so much more to be mined from this stuff. The fact that Dimension didn't seem to care at all is very disappointing."

October 10: FREDDY VS. JASON VS. ASH confirmed

It's true. FANGORIA has learned that New Line Cinema is seriously considering adding Ash (Bruce Campbell) to the inevitable FREDDY VS. JASON Round Two that the studio has in development. This is not some Internerd rumor, though the notion has been tabled out there in horror fandom for months. Sure, we've heard about other permutations for a follow-up to the blockbuster rumble (everything from FREDDY VS. JASON VS. LEATHERFACE to VS. CHUCKY to VS. MICHAEL), but the Ash scenario, evidently, is the only one that New Line is treating as a legitimate idea. We'll keep you updated.
http://www.fangoria.com/news_article.php?id=1530

HOUSE OF THE DEADs Dave Parker pitched such a project

Alien vs. Predator: This past weekend's "Ghetto Con", better known as the Los Angeles Comic Book and Science Fiction Convention, ran a 5-minute pre-production presentation on Fox's upcoming flick and Countingdown has the details: "They mentioned that 'not a frame of film has been shot yet', but shooting starts next week in Prague. They also mentioned that this tape played at their con last month, so it's possible that you know about this presentation already, but I hadn't heard much about it so far, so I figured no one would mind if I provided a quick recap of what was shown. The whole piece was narrated by director Paul WS Anderson ("Resident Evil").
As far as the story, we are told that in the past, the Predators used the the Aliens for hunting purposes, as a right of passage for the young Predator to become men (er, for lack of a better term). We see one such battle play out in an Aztec temple. Supposedly, the Predators were seen as Gods to the Aztec people (some shades of 'Stargate', it would seem), who built them their temples for worshipping and battle purposes. They showed some storyboards of one Predator defeating an Alien, holding its severed head in victory, as well as some boards where three Predator are overrun by thousands of Aliens, and upon realizing that they have clearly lost the battle, they activate their self-destruct. This is why so many ancient civilizations have been wiped out; Predator hunting failures.
Flash forward to present day, where a group of scientists have found one of the ancient Predator temples under an Antarctic icecap. The story revolves around 5 "teenage" Predators who are set to undergo their right of passage with the Aliens at this newly discovered temple, with the humans caught in the middle. There was also some brief discussion about the Predators testing out their new weapons technology. The video showed one example, a modified shuriken throwing star (apparently this weapon is 'in' again after 'Underworld'), which starts as a small handle with a trigger and expands into 6 elongated razor blades. This was actually pretty cool looking. Anyways, that pretty much rounded out the presentation. They quickly flashed some shots edited together from the two respective franchises, and rounded it out with a tagline (which may or may not be the final one), "Whoever wins...we lose." All in all, hard to tell too much about the final product from the small amount shown".
Thanks to 'Agent G'.
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news03/031021.htm

Alien vs. Predator: Well the cat is definitely out of the bag on the "Alien vs. Predator" movie - two days ago there was mutterings about finally seeing something from this but material wise the sole things out there were two pieces of artwork I posted on Monday - a logo art (which was correct) and a sort of profile image (which turned out to be from a videogame). In 48 hours things have changed quickly. First off the cab rank, Apple.Com posted up the new teaser trailer which whilst not showing any new footage it does get word of the product out there. Soon after, two one-sheets for the piece ended up online over at that biggest of marketplaces - eBay. If someone is already trying to hock 'em, it must mean they're at least out there and ready to thrive. That isn't all however. A few hours after the teaser trailer went up, so did a sweet little featurette for the film - more than likely the one that's been screening around various convention centres in the last few weeks. Here's a look at that as well. Thanks to 'Brad', 'Danimal', 'DIM', 'BD', 'Tyler', 'NashPreds99' & 'The Fatfish Returns'

:shock: Which scenes were removed?

Btw. Spud, read over FH that you had a birthday. So congratulations

AKA Pinhead vs. Michael Myers?

Can anyone verify this grapevine talk?