Wes Craven’s original Dream Demon will be heading back to the silver screen before long, as New Line Cinema is engineering a new take on A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Seemingly unperturbed by the reception of the mediocre 2010 reboot – which failed to impress critically or financially – we understand that New Line, “the house that built Freddy,” is keen on bringing the screen icon back for another scarefest. With David Leslie Johnson attached to write the script, studio executives Toby Emmerich, Walter Hamada and Dave Neustadter will oversee the nascent reboot.
That was the last update we got on the project though and it arrived back in August of 2015. It’s been almost three years then since any news about the film has emerged and understandably, some fans are starting to get worried that it’s slipped into development hell. Be that as it may, Robert Englund (who’s played Freddy in every Nightmare on Elm Street movie except the 2010 remake), believes that the franchise will always remain relevant and in good health, and during a Q&A session at Fandemic Tour Sacramento, he explained why.
“As much as I’d like to claim responsibility for the success of the movies, the true reason the movies are universal hits is the nightmare is universal. The dream is universal.”
Continuing on, he said:
“And I don’t know if you guys know this, but whether you’re in an igloo in Alaska, or whether you’re surfing in Hawaii, or whether you’re in a small village in Africa, tending your livestock, we have the same dreams, the same nightmares. We have the falling the dream, we have the drowning dream, the claustrophobic dream — these are all common dreams. And Nightmare on Elm Street became instantly universal because of that.”
Finally, Englund spoke about his fans and some of the experiences he’s had with them over the years.
“I’m onto three generations of fans now. And I have a generation of fans that tell me, from the video generation, that I was actually what they watched and were intimate and shared with their late father, or their late mother, or an older brother, or a step-father, or a single mom, or a single dad. Single dad would be really cool and let their kids watch Nightmare on Elm Street. Cool, single step-dad would be cool because he wants to look good in their eyes.”
“So I get this response, this huge response, that of all things, is very family-oriented and very full of love and a shared experience. And an afghan, and a futon, and a pizza, and watching the next Nightmare movie when it came out fresh at the video store or at the DVD rental, like Blockbuster. I get a lot of that.”
While that’s all well and good, none of this does very much to ease our worries about that new Nightmare on Elm Street film. Like we mentioned, it’s been years now since any substantial updates came our way and at this point, it’s looking like it may not happen anymore. Regardless, we’ll continue to keep our ears to the ground and let you know should anything surface.
