“It’s like Halloween Horror Nights: The Movie.”
Our favorite comic book icons have united… why not our favorite slasher icons?!
Max Landis has fantasy pitched a handful of projects over the years, some of them to studios and others simply for fun during interviews. Recently, he laid out his concept for a found footage take on a Gremlins reboot, delivered direct to Joe Dante with such infectious enthusiasm that it was hard to listen and not want to see the movie.
Landis is at it again, pitching a crazy slasher franchise crossover movie to Nerdist’s The Writers Panel podcast today that draws inspiration from… Wizard of Oz?!
The general gist of the premise, which Landis says he’s been trying to get off the ground for six years now, is that a “John Boyega from Attack the Block” type 17-year-old kid in the foster system gets temporarily placed with a nice suburban family on Elm Street… the parents of Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street.
First night there, the teenager is poisoned during dinner by the parents, slipping into an unconscious state… where he has a nightmarish vision of Freddy Krueger.
“Freddy stalks the kid… pops out… claws to the face… dead instantly,” Landis explains. “Except he’s not. Freddy can’t get his claws out of the kid’s face. All of a sudden, chains, like the movie Hellraiser, go all around Freddy… pull him up and lock him… he’s like a scarecrow.”
At this point, the teenager has a physic vision of what *really* happened the night Freddy Krueger was killed by the Elm Street parents…
“The parents of Elm Street were like a cult,” Landis continues. “And they sacrificed an innocent man, Fred Krueger, to summon the demon, Freddy Krueger, and then have been sacrificing their children for 30 years to this demon to become incredibly famous and powerful and wealthy. Now, they have finally gotten to the point where they are going to sacrifice the demon itself [to Pinhead].”
Long story short, Freddy and the teenager dream travel to Crystal Lake, where they pick up Jason Voorhees: a deformed little boy who can “Hulk up” into the monster we know. The three then head over to a Good Guy doll factory, where they find Charles Lee Ray. Freddy, Jason, Chucky and the teenager next travel to Hell, where they confront Pinhead and the Cenobites; meanwhile, in the real world, the other kids from the foster home try to save our unconscious main character from the Elm Street cult.
“Those [villains] are the guys we came to see. Why not just let them be heroes?” Landis sums up the crazy concept. “They’re the characters you love… in a new context.”
