The ‘Child’s Play’ Creator Has a ‘Chucky vs. Freddy’ Pitch
As long as there have been horror movies, there have been attempts to mix together horror movie characters in crossover films. Why, just recently, who can forget Freddy vs. Jason, the critically reviled — but financially successful — 2003 film that pitted the stars of the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises against each other? Not to mention those years where it was rumored that Evil Dead’s Ash might get thrown into the mix for a sequel; no matter how many middling reboots these franchises go through, there will always be someone who pitches a project where Hollywood just slams ’em all up together.
So no, I’m not surprised to hear that the creator of Child’s Play has a script idea for film that brings Chucky and Freddy Krueger into the same universe. As discussed on the Necronomicast podcast — and picked up by both Bloody Disgusting and /Film — Chucky creator Don Mancini had this to say about a possible Chucky vs. Freddy spinoff:
My idea for the movie is to do it as a horror movie version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It’s called Child’s Play on Elm Street. Chucky ends up in the bedroom of a house on Elm Street. And Freddy meets him there. And they’re, like, fans of each other. So they have this rapport. But then they realize Elm Street isn’t big enough for the two of them. It only can contain one killer.
While Mancini says this is an idea he’s talked about for years, he does acknowledge the difficulty in cutting through “all the legal red tape between two different studios” to actually get the project made. Still, as far as half-baked ideas go, this one isn’t so bad! Freddy and Chucky are more natural partners in crime than Freddy and Jason ever were; given both characters’ preference for talkative death sequences, you could basically be looking at the horror movie equivalent of a buddy action-comedy. If Mancini is really serious about getting this made, maybe it would work best as an animated movie? Seems like studios like Warner Bros. are getting plenty of mileage out of having a separate sandbox from their live-action films.