10 Movies That Spent Decades In Development Hell

10. Freddy Vs Jason

With most of the big-name horror franchises having been run into the ground over the course of countless terrible sequels churned out on an almost-annual basis, a crossover between two icons of the genre may have been the only fresh spin left to put on both Mr. Krueger and Mr. Voorhees when Freddy vs. Jason was initially announced.

Pitting Freddy against Jason on the big screen was first attempted in 1987, but the inability between rival studios Paramount and New Line Cinema to agree on a suitable story proved a real stumbling block, as you could imagine neither wanted their most famous serial killer to be portrayed as weaker than the other.

The desire to franchise the sh*t out of both characters didn't help matters, either. The rights to the Friday the 13th series were sold to New Line after 1989's Jason Takes Manhattan, but Wes Craven returned to Elm Street with New Nightmare before New Line went on to churn out Jason X just to squeeze every last penny out of the property, which dashed the in-development Freddy vs. Jason's hopes of being made... for the time being.

When the movie finally did hit in 2003, it earned a solid $114.9m at the box office and proved to be a hit among genre fans, if not really anybody else. As a whole, Freddy vs Jason is about as 'early 2000's' as a studio horror movie can be for better or worse; its got terrible dialogue, cringey one-liners, crap CGI, Kelly Rowland in a supporting role and Powerman 5000 on the soundtrack.