New Line Cinema Is Still Planning on Rebooting A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Again
New Line Cinema still isn’t ready to give up on their A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. According to screenwriter David Leslie Johnson-McGoldrick (Aquaman, Conjuring 3), the studio is still looking at bringing Freddy back to the big screen.
He recently told GameSpot, “It’s still happening. Nothing is percolating just yet.” He goes on to say that The Conjuring franchise is the studio’s main horror franchise focus at the moment saying, “The Conjuring Universe is sort of first and foremost on [New Line Cinema’s] horror burner.
Johnson-McGoldrick goes on to say that “everybody wants to see Freddy again,” adding the franchise’s return is “inevitable at some point.”
We previously posted an essay on rebooting films like A Nightmare on Elm Street and how the key to rebooting these long standing franchises is to “preserve the spirit of the characters, and the history and/or legacy of the franchises.”
Robert Englund has talked about what he would like to see from the franchise in the past, saying that he wants to see a prequel film that tells the backstory of Freddy. He also had another interesting and unique pitch for what he’d like to see in a reboot saying:
"If I had an Eli Roth budget I would have cast different actors to play Freddy for every potential victim because Freddy is only alive in the imagination of his future victim. They would talk about it at a slumber party or in a locker room at school, or on the bus going home. All we know about this Fred Krueger is he wears a hat, wears a red and green striped sweater and has a clawed hand. That’s the specifics."
He went on to explain how Krueger could take on a new look for each of his victims based on how they envisioned Freddy in their minds:
"So it could be a red and green cardigan for one Freddy. It could be an old tattered baseball cap for another Freddy. Freddy could be tall, he could be short, he could be overweight, he could be muscular. Every one of the victims could have a different Freddy they imagined. And you could haunt them with that Freddy."
I actually think that’s a great idea of how to handle the character. Englund said that the end of the film would reveal the true face of Freddy... Robert Englund himself:
"And then at the end, it would be the ultimate victim and we see Freddy peel [his face] open and maybe it’s yours truly revealed. And it’s the essence of Freddy."
One day we will see Freddy Krueger back up on the big screen killing a bunch of teenagers in their dreams again. How would you like to see the character handled in another reboot?