Having achieved what seemed like the impossible with his superb The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan has his sights set on another classic horror franchise with news that he has an idea for a new A Nightmare on Elm Street film.
The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor director was speaking on the Script Apart podcast when he revealed that an idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street film had been on his list for a while, and that he’d even spoken with Freddy Krueger’s final girl Heather Langenkamp on the set of The Midnight Club about a potential return of the dream master.
Flanagan told Script Apart that “One of the ones that has been on my list forever is 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. No one knows who to pitch. So I keep telling my agents, like, ‘Send me in on A Nightmare on Elm Street.’ And they’re like, ‘We’d love to. We have no idea who you should talk to.’ I’ve spent almost a year of my life with Heather Langenkamp, and we would talk about it. And it’s like, nobody knows what to do. But one of these days, perhaps.”
While recent years have seen the return of Leatherface, Ghostface, and Pinhead, the last time Freddy Krueger stepped onto the big-screen was in the 2010 reboot, in which Jackie Earle Haley took the prosthetics from long-time incumbent Robert Englund. Despite grossing over $115 million worldwide, the resulting film ended up being a bit of a nightmare.
Written and directed by the late great Wes Craven, 1984’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was made for $1.1 million, and went on to scare $57 million out of worldwide audiences. It spawned six sequels of largely diminishing returns, a television series, and a Friday the 13th mash-up movie.
SEE ALSO: Mike Flanagan is officially developing an adaptation of The Dark Tower
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Source – Collider