Robert Englund Explains Why His Nightmare On Elm Street Script Will Never Be Filmed

Robert Englund is not just the man behind Freddy Krueger’s iconic burn scar makeup in A Nightmare On Elm Street, but has also made an attempt at creating a story for the franchise, which he has now explained will never see the light of day due to it having become too dated in the time since it was written.

The movie would have been called Freddy’s Funhouse and was to focus on the family of Tina, Nancy’s best friend in the original movie and Freddy’s first victim.

“I submitted [a script] back in the day, around [A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors], which would be the older sister of the character Tina from Nightmare 1, would return to the franchise, or would be introduced to the franchise as a kind of collegiate, X-Files Nancy Drew, because she was on this obsessed quest to find out what really happened to her sister. I think that would be really interesting, to discover the truth of the Nightmare on Elm Street to the eyes, and then she would fulfill the balance of the ingredients and the recipe and the menu of Nightmare on Elm Street, which is you need a strong woman, always, to take you through. It always has to be through the eyes of a strong woman, because even if they’re skeptical and wise and cynical, they still need to lose some of their innocence about the darkness and the evil that lurks in the world.”

He went on to explain the issue that would now prevent the screenplay being filmed, saying:

“The problem with that script is I wrote it a long time ago and her detective skills are now antiquated. The things that I had her do that I thought were novel and new and cool are antiquated, because I wrote this back in the ‘90s, so now I wouldn’t be able to update because it’s not as advanced as the stuff she would use.”

Despite acknowledging the redundancy of the methods featured, Englund is still convinced that the core idea has merit.

“It would be interesting for someone to try to solve what happened, looking back, and you could even have her older now. You could have her be a graduate student, 28 years old, and just wondering what happened to her little sister all those years ago. It would be fun to do.”

The concept certainly has potential, as since we as an audience are accepting of the supernatural nature of Freddy, having someone investigate it from a skeptical and outside perspective could be an intriguing way of developing the story, not to mention the emotional connection that slasher films often lack. And with Wes Craven’s estate opening the doors to pitches for new movies in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, there’s still the possibility for the idea to at least partially be realized.