It wasn’t long ago that reports surfaced about two competing versions of a new A Nightmare on Elm Street film in the works. One, from Paramount, who won the rights to Wes Craven’s original 1984 script, and another from Warner Bros./New Line, which holds the license to the original film’s distribution overseas. Warner Bros. circled Evil Dead Rise‘s Lee Cronin to direct. But now, Dread Central is reporting that Warner Bros. version is dead in the water. Only the Paramount reboot is going forward. This is all, no doubt, a result of the Skydance takeover of Paramount and Warner Bros.
Apparently, former Warner Bros. president Michael De Luca pushed to get Warner’s reboot into production before Paramount could start theirs. The then-upcoming merger was looming, so De Luca wanted the Warner Bros. version of dream stalker Freddy Krueger out in theaters first. Even if that only meant international theaters. But then, the merger closed. Paramount completed the purchase of its rival studio on October 6. Right away, De Luca and co-president Pam Abdy lost their jobs. So now the Paramount version is the only one going forward.
Nerdist’s Take: We Just Want This Version of Elm Street to Do Better Than the 2010 Remake
All we know about this upcoming version from Paramount Primal (the studio’s new horror label) is that it can only draw on Craven’s original film, only characters and concepts within that version. This doesn’t mean a shot-for-shot remake of the 1984 original. It just means they can’t introduce elements from later sequels, even beloved ones like Dream Warriors. So we suppose a legacy sequel that ignores all the others, like the 2018 Halloween, isn’t off the table. The last Nightmare reboot in 2010 was critically derided, so the makers of the new one have a low bar to surpass. Hopefully, they deliver something worthy of the legacy of Wes Craven, Robert Englund, and Heather Langenkamp. We have our razored fingers crossed.