While Halloween has discovered a new lease of life at Blumhouse, and is about to enjoy another two sequels over the coming years, many of its genre peers remain dormant.
Take Friday the 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Neither horror franchise has been particularly active of late – in fact, they’ve remained frozen in limbo, with nary a mention of a potential sequel and/or reboot. With regard to Friday the 13th, for the longest time it looked as though Paramount had committed to launching what would have been the 13th installment in the classic horror franchise, but a series of extensive delays, coupled with legal troubles, put paid to that idea.
And so, our attention turns towards Elm Street, home of Freddy Kruger and all manner of nightmare fuel. Again, this is a franchise that is very much in cryo-sleep, but while chatting to MovieWeb, New Line chief Bob Shaye, who served as a producer on every Elm Street movie, offered his own advice for the inevitable (?) reboot.
Well, to tell you my honest opinion, at the time we made the original, I was very much disdainful of sequels. I thought it was a sort of chintzy and a cheap way for moviemakers to go. However, when you need a product and you’ve got something where the money has been spent on marketing and you’ve got an audience, well… I started to realize that there’s nothing wrong with people who go to buy hamburgers twice a week. You don’t have to serve them broiled pigeon one night because it’s a new idea. Serving a great burger is worthy in its own right, even if it is a sequel.
Shaye later clarified that he currently has no knowledge of any developments in the Elm Street saga. He did, however, warn against a straight reboot of Wes Craven’s cult horror film, and expressed those reservations as so:
I do think it’s possible to take something only so far. But there is such a big audience for those films. It could be a big success for them if they do it right. If you have good filmmakers, and real imagination, and they’re not just journeymen who do what journeymen do, turn out another pair of shoes, it’s possible to make something interesting out of almost anything, really. If somebody comes in who’s inspired and a truly creative writer and filmmaker with a real familiarity of the material, there’s no reason why they couldn’t have a foundation for another good movie.
If there is to be another installment in the Elm Street series, it may well be Robert Englund’s last, after the actor conceded that he’s ready to hang up Freddy Krueger’s killer claws once and for all. The clock is ticking, then, though if all else fails, we can at least take solace in the fact that Englund reprised his most famous role during a special Halloween-themed episode of The Goldbergs in 2018.