In 2003, New Line Cinema released Freddy vs. Jason to massive financial success. Strangely, a sequel never happened and likely never will at this point.

There was an attempt at making a sequel but it was eventually abandoned.

Freddy vs. Jason Took Ten Years To Make

John Carpenter's Halloween kicked off the slasher craze when it was released in 1978. The 1980s were filled to the brim with a masked killer stalking young virginal women. The two biggest icons of this era were Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger.

Jason made his debut in the 1980s Friday the 13th although he is not the killer; Pamela Voorhees is. Her son, Jason, drowned at Camp Crystal Lake because the counselors were busy having sex instead of watching him. Every time the camp tried to re-open, Mrs. Voorhees would kill anyone who set foot on the grounds. The original film ends with Alice, the sole survivor of Mrs. Voorhees' latest attacks, decapitating the killer.

Related: 15 Bloody Reasons Why Every Horror Game Fan Is Excited For 'Friday The 13th: The Game'

Jason then becomes the killer in the sequel released in 1981; he eternally seeks vengeance against anyone who comes to the camp seeing them as extensions of the counselors that let him drown and butchered his mother. Eight Friday the 13th movies were released between 1980 and 1989.

Freddy Krueger debuted in the 1984 classic A Nightmare on Elm Street directed by Wes Craven. Freddy was a child killer who was caught. But a cop forgot to sign the search warrant and Freddy was set free. A vigilante mob hunted Freddy down and burned him to death. After, Freddy returned as a malevolent spirit who haunts the dreams of the children of the people who killed him. Five movies were released between 1984 and 1989.

As fans often do, debates began about which of these two killers would win a fight. But a crossover was difficult due to the characters being owned by two different studios; Paramount owned Friday the 13th while New Line Cinema owned A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, after the perceived disappointment of Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Paramount sold the character rights of Jason Voorhees and his mother to New Line.

New Line moved to set the crossover up starting by ending the two series. In 1991, New Line released Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare which was followed by Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday in 1993. To build hype, the latter film was given a cliffhanger. Jason's mask lay in a pile of dirt. Then, the gloved hand of Freddy bursts through the ground and drags the mask underneath while the character laughs.

Dozens of scripts were written throughout the nineties some of which have leaked online. One involved a Freddy cult trying to resurrect him through virgin sacrifice. Jason comes into the picture when the boyfriend, also named Jason, of the aforementioned virgin, is killed. The virgin then puts her boyfriend's heart into Jason who fights by the main characters' side as a hero against Freddy because Jason Voorhees now loves the virgin thanks to his new heart.

Most of these scripts were rejected for either being too expensive or just flat out terrible. After a decade of development as well as a new movie for each series, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift provided a script that became Freddy vs. Jason.

Related: 15 Horror Movie Sequels, Ranked From Worst To Best

Place Your Bets: The Film Was a Massive Success

Directed by Ronny Yu, the film grossed $116 million on a budget of $30 million. Naturally, when a film is that successful, a sequel is made. Especially when considering that New Line loved to milk these two characters; Freddy vs. Jason was the 11th film to feature Jason and the 8th to feature Freddy. However, a sequel was never released.

via Screamfest

Planned Follow-up Was Set to Include Ash From Evil Dead

The idea for a sequel always intended for a third horror character to become involved. Various ideas were thrown around such as Halloween's Michael Myers and Hellraiser's Pinhead. However, that would have required New Line to acquire the right to these characters from Miramax.

Then, the idea turned to Ash, Bruce Campbell's hero from the Evil Dead series. With support from Sam Raimi, a treatment was developed. Interestingly, the Necronomicon, the book of the dead that was featured in the Evil Dead films was seen in Jason Goes to Hell. It was a fun Easter egg prop but ultimately provided the key to tie Evil Dead in with the two slasher killers.

Bloody Disgusting reported on a leaked memo that revealed that the film would be designed to be Robert Englund's last appearance as Freddy Krueger who was growing tired of the make-up process. Englund played Freddy in all of the first eight movies including Freddy vs. Jason although a prequel film about Freddy before he's burned is also mentioned as a priority. Ash would kill Freddy for good at the end of the film.

Planned Sequel Became a Comic While The Films Rebooted

It has never been conclusively stated why Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash never became a film. It is interesting to note that in 2003, the year Freddy vs. Jason was released, the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre starring Jessica Biel was released. That film grossed $107 million on a budget of $9.8 million. So it made almost the same amount of money as Freddy vs. Jason but on a lower budget. The sequel likely would have cost more than its predecessor in both development and production. Remakes of classic horror films became the new trend.

However, fans did get to experience Ash's battle against the two monsters in comic book form. A six-issue miniseries was published by Wildstorm in 2007 with a sequel mini-series published in 2009.

via SyFy Wire

A reboot of Friday the 13th was released in 2009 with A Nightmare on Elm Street following in 2010. The former grossed $93 million on a budget of $19 million while the latter grossed $116 million on a budget of $35 million. Despite this, no sequels were ever made.

There are no current plans for new films in either franchise.

Next: Who Wore It Better? 18 Classic Horror Villains Vs. The Remakes