Welcome to Script to Pieces, a recurring feature at Wicked Horror where we look at the best, most interesting and at times most unbelievable horror movies that never happened. Sometimes these will be productions that never came together at all, other times, they will be original incarnations that were completely different from what we wound up with. Each should be fascinating in its own way, because the stories of movies that never see the light of day can sometimes be even more interesting than the stories of those that do.
After the box office failure of Hellraiser: Bloodline, Dimension Films was fighting for ideas to keep the franchise afloat. They owned the Hellraiser property which at one point had been completely lucrative and they wanted to make it that way again. They produced a few entries straight-to-video just to remind audiences that the franchise was there and to maintain the rights.
But the success of Hellraiser had always been on the big screen. Dimension wanted that, but they wanted a surefire money-maker. With Freddy vs. Jason picking up steam in Hollywood, attention turned to the idea of combining franchises. Most famously, after the release of Freddy vs. Jason, they attempted to combine the franchise with Halloween’s Michael Myers in a crossover that would have been written by Clive Barker and directed by John Carpenter.
Before that, however, Dimension almost tried a much more radical approach. After the release of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, Bob Weinstein approached writer/director Kevin Smith with the idea of injecting the comedy duo into an old-fashioned monster mash-up.
While Smith was admittedly enticed by the idea of sending Jay and Silent Bob on a journey through Hell, it doesn’t look as though the idea was ever entertained too seriously. Dimension did seem serious about it, though, so Smith was involved during whatever idea stages actually came about.
He thought about how to make the project work, but just couldn’t see it. “This was back in the day at Miramax, not even The Weinstein Company. He’s like, ‘We have Hellraiser, Pinhead. We have Michael Myers, Halloween. We have Children of the Corn. Why not Jay and Bob meeting the modern day monsters so it’s kind of like Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein or The Wolfman but instead it’s Jay and Bob meeting Pinhead?’ And I was like, ‘Bob [Weinstein], I can’t get my head around that.’”
Smith also recounts an interesting anecdote of explaining the story to Ben Affleck, who was a close friend of the director at the time. According to Smith, Affleck laughed at first, then thought about it for a second and said, “You know what, dude? That movie would make $100 million.”
Of course, it never came to pass. And while the Hellraiser series has gone in some strange directions, including space, it’s never gone in a direction this strange. In fact, this has to be one of the most bizarre crossover ideas in the modern history of film.
It’s probably for the best that Jay and Silent Bob Meet Pinhead never did come to pass, but it’s hard to deny that one has to wonder what that movie would have even looked like.
