When Freddy Krueger grabbed Jason Voorhees’ hockey mask at the end of “Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday,” fans got excited for a big showdown. This finally happened in 2003’s “Freddy vs. Jason.” After that, fans wanted to see another battle, this time including Ash Williams from “Evil Dead.” While it did become a comic book series, it never made it to the movies. Bruce Campbell, who plays Ash, explained at San Diego Comic-Con why the crossover never happened.
Campbell said, “These ideas are creatively bankrupt, and I’ll tell you why. Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: we had a five-minute conversation with New Line about making that movie. We were told you cannot kill either one of them, and you cannot have any plot or dialogue that affects the other characters. Only one company has control of this character, where we can only control Ash. Your story has to be really convoluted and terrible, and Ash doesn’t get to kill either one of them. It’s a silly concept.”
Basically, Ash couldn’t defeat Freddy or Jason, which seemed pointless. So, it stayed a comic book idea. Campbell also questioned another movie matchup at Comic-Con:
“Why is Batman fighting Superman? Can we please stop that silliness? Because Superman would squash his head like a zit in a nanosecond. The story is over.” When someone mentioned Kryptonite, Campbell joked, “What, in his back pocket? Batman’s carrying it around?”
Who is Ash Williams?
Ash Williams first appeared in Sam Raimi’s low-budget film “The Evil Dead.” Ash and his friends accidentally unleash an ancient evil at a cabin, turning them into demonic Deadites one by one. As the only survivor, Ash fights the demons again in “Evil Dead II,” where he loses his hand and replaces it with a chainsaw. In “Army of Darkness,” Ash is transported back to medieval times to battle more demons. Campbell also played Ash in “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” a series on Starz, and made cameos in the “Evil Dead” remake and “Evil Dead Rise.”
Bruce Campbell, a B-movie legend, will next appear in the Peacock series “Hysteria!” where he will play a small-town sheriff dealing with strange, Satanic-themed murders.
