Playing with action figures is a lot of fun. You can let your imagination run wild. Superman can go from fighting a giant stuffed Olaf that you pretend is Lex Luthor to having tea in a fortress made of multi-colored blocks. But who is with him in the city? It’s the Ghostbusters (though without their proton packs because those keep breaking, so you only bring them out for special occasions). Normally, Clark Kent wouldn’t be able to interact with Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, and Egon Spengler. When playing with action figures, you can pair up anyone you have access to, and it doesn’t even have to make sense.

That’s the great thing about your imagination: it’s limitless. No corporate lawyer is coming to tell you that Lex Luthor can’t have a carrot nose. Bill Murray won’t deny you the ability to pair Superman with Ghostbusters because his contracts don’t extend to your apartment. “Hey Ghostbusters, good to see you,” is all that needs to be said for the two sides to mingle. Do you want to build an elaborate scenario of why we drink together? be my guest This is a play session, not a $30 million movie with two horror icons long after their appeal has waned!

Such was the case with Freddy vs. Jason. Released in 2003, Freddy vs Jason is better than it has any right to be. It’s not good! Ten other scenarios led to this movie, and all of them probably would have been more interesting (read Slash of the Titans by Dustin McNeill). Regardless, the two eponymous leads pull an Itchy & Scratchy and fight and fight and fight. Jason slaughters some 20-year-old high school kids while Freddy wisely escapes (and brings Scut Farkus back from the dead). It lives up to its promise, made a killing at the box office and never saw a sequel. That’s not to say one wasn’t nearly made.

New Line Cinemas made a meal of the two horror icons who were on screen together for the first time. There was even a weigh-in in Vegas. The film also emphasized combat (and little else). So when it came time to develop a sequel, the idea was to throw in another horror name: Ash Williams. Ash, played by Bruce Campbell, was the main character in three Evil Dead movies at the time. Campbell was no fan of New Line Cinemas, as he was revealed recently on Sam Roberts’ radio show. Campbell had been approached to do Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ashbut he didn’t get far.

“It was a wonderful five-minute call with New Line, which we called New Lies Cinema at the time,” Campbell explained. “They were our first distributor of Evil dead. They gave us a check and that was the only check I ever saw. Ever. Thank you, New Lies Cinema.” Studios making it difficult for commercials when it’s time to pay is nothing new. It would make sense if this was a driving motivation for Bruce not wanting to work with them. But the actor made it clear that the film’s “creative” direction was not appealing at all.

“They’re doing Jason Vs. Freddy, they do this, they say, “How about Jason vs. freddy vs. Ash?” It won’t be great,” the actor noted. “So we immediately started going, ‘Yeah, isn’t that going to be fantastic?’ Ash is eventually able to kill both villains. Let’s get it over with. Long break. Long break. “Um, you can’t affect anything that happens to any of the other characters.” You can’t kill any of them. You can’t even determine what’s really going on in the fights. So it’s going to be like a battle between the committees.”

New Line being protective is what kept Freddy vs Jason from being made, so who knows if anything would have happened even if Campbell and his friend and director Sam Raimi had played ball. Regardless, as Campbell then points out, there’s an expectation that would come with Ash in a movie like this. “Ash is the only good guy in all these horror shows. Yes. So he has to kill them. It should kill them, even if their eyes open right at the end and they’ll cut to credits like they usually do.” Boom baby! Why have Ash in the movie if he can’t… be Ash?

With a movie like this, there has to be more developed reasons for what happens. Some early versions of Freddy vs. Jason included teenagers trying to use Jason (a monster who was abused and killed as a child) vs Freddy (a criminal pedophile) in ways that felt interesting, without getting too complicated, but with some complex ideas. Freddy vs. Jason it threw away that complexity in favor of oversimplifying things in a way that was somehow more complicated. Sounds like Freddy vs. Jason vs Ash would have followed the same path.