It’s been 13 years since we saw a new entry into the A Nightmare on Elm Street horror film franchise, and one day there will be another attempt to revive it. At one point, Wes Craven’s estate got the rights back to the horror franchise, and they were taking pitches from people for a new film and/or series.
Robert Englund played Freddy Krueger for years, and he has his own idea of how the franchise could be revived. He thinks that rather than recreating the origin story of Krueger, elements of the second and third films in the franchise could be reimagined in interesting new ways offering new perspectives on those stories. He explained in an interview with CB:
“I certainly think that they should reboot [A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors], because 3 has a ‘previously on Nightmare on Elm Street’ sense to it, and it reunites everybody, and it is the fan favorite. I think if you took a poll or a vote, you’d find out more people like Dream Warriors than any other film. And it’s a good script. The original script for that is terrific, and if you look at who wrote it, those people have Oscars now. And then I would love to do a cameo in it, maybe switch genders and play the Priscilla Pointer, Amy Irving’s mother’s role, the skeptical, cynical therapist who doesn’t believe they’re all having a common dream, a dream in common, a nightmare, a collective nightmare. I think that would be fun, a nice wink at the audience. It’s traditional in a remake to bring somebody back from the original.
“But yeah, it’s hard. I mean, I would love to see a sensitive, contemporary director, independent, Spirit Award-winning director or somebody reboot [Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge] and really explore Freddy’s manipulation of the boy in that and the boy’s burgeoning bisexuality. I think today, we could do that. We could deal with that and what’s going on there and play with the psychology of it and Freddy’s manipulation of that and really make that heroic. I think that would be interesting to do. I think we’re ready for that.”
Englund went on to talk about the new filmmaking technology that could be used today to do things with the franchise that we’ve never seen before saying:
“To me, Nightmare on Elm Street is one of those films that does, in fact, beg for the new technology. The dreamscape, the landscape of the mind is such a ripe place to go with CGI. I think that that would be fun, so that would require a bigger budget. Not Marvel-level budget or effects, but I think imaginative … I remember years ago seeing that movie with Robin Williams, What Dreams May Come, the one where the paintings come alive. That effect done today is probably much more enhanced and sophisticated, and I think that would be an interesting effect to use as a segue into a nightmare, into the dream landscape. But I’m no fool. I grew up in Hollywood. They remake everything, and they’re going to remake it sooner or later, and I think one of the tricks would be to find one actor that can go the distance, play Freddy over and over again.”
Englund also would like to see the iconography from the film series reimagined in more ambitious ways, and he’d like to see expand on the mythology in unexpected ways. He said:
“All people know about Freddy Krueger is that he’s disfigured from burns. He wears a hat. He has a red-and-green sweater on and a claw. That’s all they know. They don’t really call it a fedora, I don’t think. They don’t go into great description of the claw, the glove, or the sweater, other than maybe the stripes. So the sweater could be a cardigan. The hat could be an old frayed baseball hat. The claws could have huge blades on them like Wolverine or little tiny sharp nails on them. It could be leather fetish. It could be S&M bondage-ish. We don’t know. Freddy could be taller. Freddy could be older. Freddy could be younger. Freddy could be shorter. Freddy could be fat.
“And everybody that has heard the legend, the myth, the story whispered about the locker room or at the sleepover party that hears about this Freddy Krueger who killed children, and ‘my mother heard, and she said, and I heard Daddy say, and blah, blah, blah.’ Now they’ve heard about it. Now they’re infected, and Freddy’s in their subconscious, and when they fall asleep, he can enter them. But they only know those basic facts, so they could imagine a different Freddy. And then we would maybe reveal at the end the uber Freddy that’s controlling all of these dreams, but it’s their subconscious that manipulates the image of Freddy. So you could have half a dozen Freddys, actors play Freddy, which would be fun, I think.”
These sound like they could be cool and interesting ideas to play with. I have no idea what is going to happen with the future of the franchise, but it’s fun and interesting to see what Englund would do if he had a say in how things move forward.
The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, and Midnight Mass director Mike Flanagan has been wanting to make a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie. It’s a film project that he’s been dying to pitch, but he hasn’t had the opportunity to do that yet because, apparently, no one knows who he needs to meet with to pitch it! He previously talked about his pitch saying:
“One of the [franchises] on my list forever has been A Nightmare on Elm Street. Boy, that would be fun. I have a whole take for it that I worked out a couple of years ago and my understanding is the rights situation for that title is so fraught, no one knows who controls it really, and no one knows who to pitch. So, I keep saying to my agents, ‘Send me in on Nightmare on Elm Street,’ and they’re like, ‘We’d love to, [but] we have no idea who you should talk to.’ And I’ve talked to — I spent almost a year of my life with [A Nightmare on Elm Street star] Heather Langenkamp, and we would talk about it. It’s like, nobody knows what to do.”
As of right now, we don’t exactly know where the rights of the franchise currently stands, which is why Flanagan is having such a big problem trying to pitch his movie! Flanagan added, “If I got to do this it would be so cool.” One day things will get figured out, though, and when it does I do hope Flanagan is the one to revive it.
Robert Englund is the subject of an upcoming documentary titled Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares: The Robert Englund Story and it hits Screambox and Digital HD on June 6th.