In a recent interview, Jason Goes to Hell director Adam Marcus confirmed that Friday the 13th and Evil Dead share the same cinematic universe. It turns out that Jason’s seemingly inability to die stems from the fact that his mother used the Necronomicon to bring him back to life. Here’s what Macus had to say about it:
“(I) wanted to create a mythology for Jason in this movie, because it had driven me nuts as a viewer. She (Pamela Voorhees) makes a deal with the devil by reading from the Necronomicon to bring back her son. This is why Jason isn’t Jason. He’s Jason plus The Evil Dead, and now I can believe that he can go from a little boy that lives in a lake, to a full grown man in a couple of months, to Zombie Jason, to never being able to kill this guy. That, to me, is way more interesting as a mashup, and (Sam) Raimi loved it!”
As the two film franchises are produced by different studios, an “official” crossover hasn’t happened yet, but the Necronomicon does make an appearance in the Voorhees basement in Jason Goes to Hell. Marcus explains:
“It’s not like I could tell New Line my plan to include The Evil Dead, because they don’t own The Evil Dead. So it had to be an Easter egg, and I did focus on it…there’s a whole scene that includes the book, and I hoped people would get it and could figure out that’s what I’m up to. So yes, in my opinion, Jason Voorhees is a Deadite. He’s one of The Evil Dead. It absolutely is canon.”
There was talks of a Ash vs Jason vs Freddy movie for years, but as Bruce Campbell told us, it just wasn’t in the cards:
“It was mostly the one was a conversation with New Line about doing Ash vs Jason vs Freddy. And I was interested because I wanted to kill them both, but we were informed that no one is killing anybody and we would only have control over what happens to the Ash character. We couldn’t control the story. We couldn’t control what Ash does to anybody else. I’m like this sounds really not creative.”
With this new revelation, and the success of Ash vs Evil Dead on STARZ, maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally see that crossover.