Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday and ultimately granted New Line rights to the Jason Voorhees character, but retained control of the "Friday the 13th" title. New Line placed Cunningham's idea for a Freddy-versus-Jason film on hold, prompting him to generate a different script to precede that plot line. Cunningham's original idea would later manifest as "Freddy vs. Jason" in 2003. The film marked Adam Marcus's debut feature; having just graduated from film school, Marcus was originally attached to direct "My Boyfriend's Back" (1993) for Touchstone Pictures, but the studio's parent company, Walt Disney Studios, did not want to hire a first-time director, and Marcus was
Jason Voorhees Tommy Jarvis as the main antagonist. Screenwriter Barney Cohen felt Jarvis would become a substitute for Jason, but the idea was never fully developed in "A New Beginning". Director and co-screenwriter Danny Steinmann disliked the idea of Jason not being the killer, but decided to use Tommy's fear of Jason as the primary story. This idea was immediately abandoned in "Jason Lives", when "A New Beginning" did not spark the "creative success" the studio was looking for. Executive producer Frank Mancuso Jr. wanted to bring Jason back, and he did not care how it was achieved. In yet another alteration