‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Headed for New Reboot

It looks like a dream scenario could be developing for A Nightmare on Elm Street fans.

Deadline reports that Paramount has secured the rights to the original screenplay of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the landmark ’80s slasher film directed by Wes Craven.

“The idea,” they write, “is to reboot the franchise at Paramount.”

They note that in recent years, copyright law has allowed the original creators of lucrative franchises (or their estates) to reacquire the rights to their creations, and then to license those rights out to other studios. That’s precisely what happened in the case of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The original films were released by New Line Cinema — whose nickname for quite a while was “The House That Freddy Built” thanks to the enormous success of the franchise — but now Paramount controls the rights to develop new films based on the original concept.

New Line

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New Line released seven Nightmares between 1984 and 1994, all featuring the monstrous child murderer Freddy Krueger, who somehow manages to survive his brutal killing at the hands of his victims’ parents, and lives on to haunt more kids living on and around Elm Street by invading their dreams while they sleep in sequel after sequel. All seven films featured Robert Englund as the vicious, quippy Freddy.

After the original franchise ran its course, Freddy returned to the big screen two more times: First in a 2003 crossover sequel with Friday the 13th called Freddy vs. Jason, and then in a remake of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, this time with Jackie Earle Haley in the lead role. That was 2010, meaning it’s already been 16 years since Freddy tortured teenagers’ nightmares.

Given the ongoing popularity of those classic ’80s slasher franchises like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th, a reboot (or even an ongoing streaming TV series) sounds like a very lucrative idea — which now belongs to Paramount.