With requels already in the ether from David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy, that horrible Texas Chainsaw Massacre film on Netflix, and DGG's upcoming requel trilogy to The Exorcist, rumors are swirling that we could be getting a requel of A Nightmare on Elm Street produced by Blumhouse.
According to @thevscooper on Twitter, Blumhouse has been secretly working on making a requel of the first entry in the saga. They also state that while they don't have an exact date, this film is a high priority for the studio.
For the record, I'm not familiar with The V Scooper, so I took their tweet with a grain of salt. However One Take News dug a little deeper into the rumors, and brought back some facts.
First and foremost, we have been told that Wes Craven’s estate has the rights locked in, which Bloody Disgusting first reported. Up until last year, New Line Cinema was the only studio who would have any form of access to said rights. OTN has heard from multiple sources that Jason Blum has been advocating to get the rights and has been trying to convince the Craven estate for quite a while now. Last year, per a report from Puck, it was revealed New Line Cinema, who’s released every film in the franchise, was negotiating to maintain the domestic rights to the franchise as well as develop future films. As of now, it is unknown what came of that.
Now, here’s where it gets complicated.
There have been rumours of the Craven estate finally giving in and that a bidding war secretly took place amongst the studios for the rights to Elm Street in the last month or two. We at OTN have only heard of these rumours and haven’t been able to corroborate it at the time of this writing. The rumour states Blumhouse won the rights to Elm Street and that they’d be developing a new film.
So, what does this all mean?
We hate to be the bearer of bad news, but One Take News has heard that at the time of this article, Blumhouse is NOT developing a new Elm Street project and that the rights do not belong to them. HOWEVER, we have heard whispers of New Line re-gaining the rights but we have not confirmed this. We reached out to New Line for comment on the matter and will update this article if they respond.
No new Elm Street films have been in development since 2010 and Robert Englund has said he’s retired from playing his signature character. As to what the future of this franchise is, is currently unknown but if time has told us anything, Freddy will be back soon enough.
So there is some partial truth to what The V Scooper is saying, since Blumhouse and other studios are in a bidding war to secure the rights to the Elm Street IP. However I'm on the fence regarding Blumhouse taking on the franchise.
First, a few of their horror films have been a mixed bag for me. Also while flawed at times, I know David Gordon Green's Halloween trilogy was pretty divisive among horror movie fans.
As for ANOES, I say find a way to bring back Nancy (who was killed off in Dream Warriors). Robert Englund has said he will not reprise his iconic Freddy Krueger role because at 74 he feels he's too old to handle all the physical requirements.
I've also heard rumors that they want Freddy to be CGI, which in my opinion would be a bad idea. I say either have someone do the physical stunts while Robert does Freddy's voice, or hire a new actor like Walton Goggins or Kevin Bacon to play the Elm Street child killer.
I can see a bigger studio taking on a Elm Street project, since the set pieces to create the dream world would be way beyond Blumhouse's pay grade. So if they do end up at a studio with a fatter wallet, I would suggest they go with Paramount, since that's also the studio that's behind the Scream films.
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