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 calculated because he feels that he has been wronged and he is fighting back; he is meant to be more sympathetic in this film. Fuller and Form contend that they did not want to make Jason too sympathetic to the audience. As Brad Fuller explains, "We do not want him to be sympathetic. Jason is not a comedic character, he is not sympathetic. He's a killing machine. Plain and simple." In 2005, California State University's Media Psychology Lab surveyed 1,166 people Americans aged from 16 to 91 on the psychological appeal of movie monsters. Many of the characteristics associated with