The Future of Elm Street

[nightmarewebmaster]

With the film rights of A Nightmare on Elm Street reverting to the late Wes Craven's estate, what should they do with those rights?  Several pitches have supposedly been made to the estate, but nothing concrete has been announced.  As a fan of the series, how should they proceed?

[S-10]

I would like a vague "sequel" with Englund returning in the role. I really like Mike Flanagan as director and after seeing Doctor Sleep, I am curious to see what he could achieve.

[Rod Lane]

I really want one last hoorah with Englund, and also preferrably Langenkamp in The Beautiful Dream. they're gonna reboot it anyway, why not indulge in what the fans clearly want?
Englund is 70+ years old, so what? So is Alice Cooper..
Look at part 1. freddy's lurking in the shadows. the few big stunts are stuntmen.. With an approach like that, where's the harm in Englund reprising his role one last time?

[S-10]

I really want one last hoorah with Englund, and also preferrably Langenkamp in The Beautiful Dream. they're gonna reboot it anyway, why not indulge in what the fans clearly want?
Englund is 70+ years old, so what? So is Alice Cooper..
Look at part 1. freddy's lurking in the shadows. the few big stunts are stuntmen.. With an approach like that, where's the harm in Englund reprising his role one last time?

We all know Englund, if asked he would do it without a second thought. It's not up to him, it's up to the studio and producers.

[HazelRah]

The wonderful thing about Wes' Wonderful World of Krueger is that the possibilities are endless.

But each have their own hurdles....

Continue the continuity of the original movies?There's a lot of baggage to carry. What's left to tell? Freddy set out what he originally intended to do and murdered every last Elm Street child. He killed them all, even Nancy(Boooo...Hisssss). Those Parents who burned him,STILL lost every thing.And he just keeps on killing.He won.

If Robert Englund were to be brought back,the movie has gotta be big in scope.Because,lets be real, this will be the last one with him. This movie has to be epic .With the return of Alice and Jacob.With the return of Nancy as a spiritual Dream Master. With Nancy and Alice facing off against Krueger together in one big Final Woman fight.With all the amazing CGI and practical effects that could never be done before possible.

When last we left him he had slaughtered the whole of Springwoods children before getting blown up by his own daughter. And while I enjoy Freddy's Dead to a certain degree.....I'm not nor ever will be a fan of the giant burnt wiggly sperm known as the Dream Demons who gave him the power of voodoo...who doo? You doo? do what?Remind me of the babe ....I digress...

Where does he go from there?I really don't want a movie where he tries to use or kill his father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate or some other long lost never mentioned before relative. I'd like to see a Nightmare in the original continuity to show that Freddy is now a danger to the whole of the world.Everyone is aware and afraid of Freddy.Fear generated on a global scale. He is killing worldwide. Go beyond the need to rehash and explain who Freddy was and "is he or is he not real?" in yet another movie?Anyone watching this film already knows Freddy,or knows someone who will fill in the blanks.Get on with it!Tell us something new

Like Santa Claus,in a new movie everyone should know Freddy.Children are taught in school how to control their dreams.Drafted and enlisted into a army of Warriors trained to fight Freddy inside the Nightmare.Parents will go to great lengths to help their children survive the night.Helicopter dream patrolling.Hypnocil addicts.Killer tweets.

Another reboot? Again we have the issue with the original story-line being played out.Parents burn a serial killer to protect their children, and that same serial killer returns years later to kill those children anyway in their dreams where the parents cant protect them. We've seen that.I feel there is nothing they could introduce to the table that would make a second remake interesting to watch if they tried to tell the original story with new actors. Unless they change the history of Freddy or the reason why he was burnt.That that reason is an even darker secret than the murder of Freddy.But twisting that history could turn a lot of core audience off.Some folks have a strange idea of entertainment , and they definitely don't want anyone to change a note of the original song.

Another VS? Well, they could easily CGI the corpses of Abbott and Costello ...

I wish the Craven family would start out with a television show.Rebuild the brand over the length of a series story-line vs cramming all the info,old and new, into a single movie.Allow us to meet new characters,spend time with them ,and then let Freddy kill them off randomly to our dismay

We could meet the new Freddy in the series if Robert doesn't or can't return.Let this Freddy be his own vs having to fill the glove of old.We dont know why this version of Freddy is after the children.But that secret will be revealed over time.

Or maybe the series is all about the handing off the glove to a new monster.A young man who is following in the footsteps of Freddy.And Freddy enjoys being the mentor to a new monster.Maybe Freddy cant invade dreams,or cause any real physical soul collecting harm anymore now that the Demons have left him, but he can certainly coach the next in line.

If it works, the second or third season could lead into a movie.

Or,a possibility, what if the entirety of the first season is a dream of one of the characters.Season one sees death after death and ends with the main character waking from a coma in a hospital.And all the friends and people killed off in season one , are once again alive in season two.So the characters we liked from the first season return , only to be in danger of being killed again.This time for real.

Maybe Freddy was trapped in the dream of the coma patient who never woke.True, he induced Joey into a coma but that was a trap he set that he knew he could get out of because Kristin would eventually pull a number of people into the shared dream that Freddy could then slip out of inside.This dreamer was all alone with Freddy for years.

And what if the original dreamer was the last child that Freddy intended to murder back before he was burnt alive.But for some reason ,Freddy never came back for her/him. But that never stopped their mind from thinking about what could have happened,the almost death. Obsessing over the details of Freddy's past.So much living in fear,and dreaming in fear  that it eventually calls Freddy from the shadows. The "dream" version of Freddy opens a gateway that allows Freddy to cross over and step into the shoes of the dream version,making the death and pain real.

[Billy]

I want to see at least one more movie with Robert playing Freddy. But I want to see a dark, creepy and serious Freddy like the 1984 original, and not a “comedian” Freddy as in the later movies. I’m not really a fan of any more “versus”, even though I didn’t mind Freddy vs Jason. I want them to go back to the original concept.

[Rod Lane]

If Robert Englund were to be brought back,the movie has gotta be big in scope.Because,lets be real, this will be the last one with him. This movie has to be epic .With the return of Alice and Jacob.With the return of Nancy as a spiritual Dream Master. With Nancy and Alice facing off against Krueger together in one big Final Woman fight.With all the amazing CGI and practical effects that could never be done before possible.



Like Santa Claus,in a new movie everyone should know Freddy.Children are taught in school how to control their dreams.Drafted and enlisted into a army of Warriors trained to fight Freddy inside the Nightmare.Parents will go to great lengths to help their children survive the night.Helicopter dream patrolling.Hypnocil addicts.Killer tweets.

Yup. Something like this

[Billy]

If Robert Englund were to be brought back,the movie has gotta be big in scope.Because,lets be real, this will be the last one with him. This movie has to be epic .With the return of Alice and Jacob.With the return of Nancy as a spiritual Dream Master. With Nancy and Alice facing off against Krueger together in one big Final Woman fight.With all the amazing CGI and practical effects that could never be done before possible.

Yes, I agree. If it is the last one with Robert, it has to be just as good as the original, if not better. Yes, the original is a classic and will always be the best in most people’s eyes, but they have to go out with a bang if this is to be the last one with Englund.

[Rod Lane]

Yes. Another retelling (rehash) of the mystery of who Freddy is and why he's after the kids is a waste of time and space at this point. Also, in this day and age the kids would be able to find out who he was and whatnot by a simple google search.. (yet another plothole in the remake btw..) Move on from that. Keep it in the original timeline, with the original story about The Springwood Slasher.
Freddy being a threat on a world wide scale threatening an apocalypse? Sure, no argument from me.  Nancy in the beautiful dream? No problem. Alice and Jacob? Great. Let's go. Original actors reprising their roles goes without saying. And bring back Bernstein to do the score. Happy ending or end of the world? Doesn't really matter to me  But yes, it has to be big!

[Billy]

I think if one more Nightmare movie is to be big, you need to have people getting involved who are familiar with the series.

[HazelRah]

I've often wondered what ideas Wes Craven had written down in regard to the future of Freddy .

His original intended ending for the first film was going to be much less a concrete confirmation that Krueger was still out there.The in your face ,Marge through the front door , was more of Bob Shaye wanting to give the audience one last jolt that would leave them talking about the film all the way out the theater doors.

And at the time Wes probably wasn't thinking about a sequel possibility.The script was started in 81 and by the time filming began in June of 84, sequels to horror were still not a given( the Universal Monsters most likely being the first time there was a run of movies with the same monsters).Sure Friday the 13th had its 4th released in 84, and Halloween was up to Part 3( the third minus the main maniac,even) . Not to mention, Craven had to give away all his rights to the original just to get it made. So there was not much in it for him to spend time thinking about new Freddy adventures.

Then, the series quickly became a sequel moneymaker for New Line.

Was Wes even asked to write his own sequel to Part 2? I know they offered him the directors job , but Wes said no after reading the script they eventually used. But did they even ask him if he had any ideas?

Then he returned to write the script for Part 3, but due to filming Deadly Friend couldnt direct. And then with the continued success and merchandising of the gloved one, relation with the studio soured. Wes ,rightfully thinking he should be owed money for giving them this cash cow in the first place.

So it's unlikely he spent a lot of time coming up with new ideas.And focused his energies on whatever movie he WAS getting paid to make.

But as we all know, it's hard NOT to think about the movie, the characters, and the possibilities. So I wonder if every once and a while Wes jotted down an idea that fit into the makeup of the Nightmare. Some of this must have happened already by the time he made up with New Line(check cleared,$cha-ching$) because he was able to produce what became the fantastic New Nightmare. Those ideas and themes of that movie must have been percolating in his brain for years.

There might even have been elements that he cut from the writing of the original script that could be of interest,as they may have only been removed due to obvious budgetary and special effect capabilities of the time, or merely that they didnt fit into the movie as a whole.

I wonder if Wes had a notebook of ideas sitting in his workspace or library of unused Nightmare ideas. The Craven family might want to start with those and share them with whomever they hire to write the next movie. Though, I imagine the net potential movie will come from a submitted script versus a for hire.

[Billy]

It’d be good if they could cover Freddy’s life and death all in 1 movie. Obviously they could cover everything, from his trial to when the courts let him go on a technicality, to the parents burning him alive, and when he becomes a dream killer. You’d probably need like a 3 hour movie for all that, but I think they can do it.

[Rod Lane]

Freddy's Life and death..

That's not a bad idea. Sure there are certain fan fics that does that, some even good. But it would obviously be nice to get something official. And yes, it would have to be a three-parter or at the very least two parts.

You need to start with Freddy's killing spree, no more beating around the bush. The Springwood Slasher needs to be adressed and shown.
So the first part needs to be american suburbia, white picket fences, children disappearing and turning up dead. Don't focus too much on Fred or make him the lead, focus on officer Thompson who's assigned to the case. And show a community falling apart at the seams.

Loner Freddy or family man Freddy? THAT is the question.. Personally I prefer loner Freddy, but I do recognize that most people are familiar with family man Freddy. so.. Whatever works for the story, I guess.

And this first part would focus on that, leading up to his subsequent arrest and mistrial.
And of course the lynching.

For the second part? Well, Freddy spent 10 years getting ready for returning to extract his revenge.
I'd say give us raw emotional human drama depicting the aftermath of this. What exactly happened between Donald and Marge? All we know is that they divorced. I'm also suspecting Donald got promoted to lieutenant for apprehending Freddy, even though the search warrant was botched.

But what happened to the other families? For instance the Parkers? Elaine seemed to have gotten the house and is shown living pretty well. Seargent Parker could certainly have been her husband and also Kristen's dad.

These are just loose ideas, but there's certainly enough drama to be found here..

Part 3. Well, this is essentially Freddy's return and basically Nightmare part 1. I'm NOT interested in revisiting the dream demons, but we need to visit the nightmare realm in here one way or another..

[HazelRah]

While I would be interested in a birth to burning tale . I think that day has passed. At the height of Freddydom they could have had a successful go of it. "For the first time....see how the Nightmare began!"

But how could a movie "bio" be interesting enough to appeal beyond the Elm Street base? We are talking about a icon of fear ,here, it has to be dark, and nasty.Not some simple serial killer story.

And which version of Freddy's history would they follow? The Original Craven movie, or the Dream Warriors conception horror? The Kruegers a daddy of Freddys Dead timeline?  Dream Demons? Freddys Nightmare's "No More Mr Nice Guy"?

Admittedly, I am not a fan of the Freddy history played out in Freddy's Dead. It never set right with my picture of what Krueger was before the first movie.While it was fun to watch in the context of the last movie, it felt out of character.

There is a LOT of ground to cover in a Freddy origin story. The corruption of his soul that drove him to murder....the murders themselves..the towns fear of the unknown.. .the investigation....the trial...The vigilante burning

With so much information to convey, the story would be better served as a multi episode series.No need to rush through or past the checkpoints.Allow for multiple perspectives on the history.Give breathing room to building the fear of Freddy.

Maybe they could do a story with someone researching the history of Freddy.  Coming to Springwood to explore its past.This person seeks out "the child who lived" ,the last intended victim of Kruegers before he was captured and subsequently burned alive. Someone whom Freddy was scared away from killing on his last night of freedom. This child has lived in fear of that night for their entire life.And in survivors guilt. Haunted their entire life.With bullies picking on the kid on the playground "one...two....Freddys coming for you..." to adults whispering about the child wherever they went.This person observed the mysterious deaths of the many children of Elm Street/Springwood over the years.The names of families that he knew personally.Some were even friends he lost as a child to Freddys touch.The constant ,violent nature of these deaths.Maybe as the child grew up, they looked into the history of Freddy themselves.And when the reporter comes to town, the stories and flashbacks come out.....and what if new murders started to happen in town.With a Freddy flare. Is it a new copycat?...the Next Freddy?...or is all this talk of Krueger with the townsfolk,the families who lost children, and the survivor...stirring the embers of the fear that fires Freddy,calling him back home to Elm Street?

[Itsadoor]

Alice and Jacob live their lives in modern day 2025. Krueger has been ‘he who shall not be named’ since 1989. For Jacob’s entire life, he’s taken pills to keep him healthy. He thinks they’re vitamins, heart arrhythmia pills or something, but they’re a new form of Hypnocil. Only he and his mother are prescribed them, only Alice and the pharmacist know why.

Jacob (36) is a young father now of two kids named Rick (15) and Kristen (16), with a wife named Sarah, his high school sweetheart. Through some unfortunate circumstance, Jacob, forgets to pick up his prescription, runs out of pills and misses a day. Nothing seems to go awry, despite his anxieties. Until that night. He has his first Freddy dream. Krueger is older, grittier. Without the souls of the Elm Street teens, Freddy has aged, and is near spiritual death. This reveals his status as a dream demon being a curse he wished for in purgatory that was granted, so long as he continued to kill his victims. And now, 32 years later, He’s in his seventies and waning miserably in solitude.

Jacob wakes up, never knowing who the man was or why he instinctively ran from him. Later, he tells Sarah about his dream. They collectively shrug it off, Sarah casually mentioning a dream monster her dad told her about when she was young.

The next night, he has the dream again, this time with Krueger getting a rare early-upper hand. Just before he gets killed, Jacob wakes. There’s a POV shot of someone coming from the basement, through the living room, up the stairs, down the hall and into the master bedroom. Only Sarah lies there. A claw bursts into the shot and brutally slashes Sarah, leaving her to bleed out on the bed. Ala Elm Street 2, it cuts to Jacob, holding a claw, and screaming.

After being arrested on charges of murdering his wife, his mother visits him in a maximum security prison. Alice says she knows what caused this and apologizes to Jacob. She tells him his father didn’t just die in a car accident and his grandfather didn’t merely die in his sleep. She then proceeds to tell the tale of Fred Krueger, naming her and Jacob as the final links to the original parents on Elm Street who tracked Krueger down. Alice reveals the way to finally kill Freddy: “he dies when we die. We take him to our graves.” Similar to Freddy vs Jason, he lives by being spoken of, thriving on the fear he elicits. Only Jacob and Alice know he exists anymore, after all records and accounts of Krueger have been wiped away. So at this point, Freddy existing is a Mandela Effect to the rest of the world who think of a Dreamscape copycat killer. Only Alice and Jacob know of a real serial killer from the late 70’s-mid 80’s. Alice leaves a fresh prescription of Hypnocil for her son before leaving.

That night at home, Alice begins to feel tired. Her bottle of pills magically rolls out of the medicine cabinet, onto the floor, and behind the sink. When she looks for her pills, they’re gone. She panics, knowing she cannot sleep. Frightened, she hurries to her son’s home to make sure his children are okay. On the way, she visualizes the pharmacist’s death at the hands of Krueger. She narrowly escapes death as her car rolls off the road.

In jail, a disgusted guard refuses to allow Jacob his meds for the night. Jacob falls asleep terrified.

Kristen is asleep when Alice arrives. Their aunt Yvonne is watching them and worried about Alice coming around during this time. She’s in on keeping Krueger mum as well.

Jacob, possessing all of his mother’s dream powers, enter’s Kristen’s dream. Alice is there, protecting her. Krueger arrives, now terrorizing Jacob’s daughter, Alice’s granddaughter. The nightmare ends with all three waking up in a panic, but alive. Alice and Kristen go to check on Rick and find Yvonne dead with those 4 familiar claw-marks, and Rick soundly asleep.

From this point the rest of the film is about Jacob bringing on all new killings from his prison cell, with Freddy infecting the dreams of his daughter through him. Kristen’s teenage friends die through their dreams when she tells 3 of them about a nightmare disregarding what Alice told her. Freddy gets more and more powerful, with dreams becoming further and further indecipherable from reality (new CGI). Alice stops taking Hypnocil in an attempt to protect her grandchildren in their dreams as CPS tries to take them away from her custody. While Alice forces Hypnocil on the children, the pills are ineffective with Jacob’s dreams being Freddy’s entry point. Freddy always spares his life and Jacob never speaks of the terrors he sees in dreams to ensure it doesn’t spread.

Authorities eventually place Alice visiting her son in prison, as well as on the scene of the crime in Yvonne’s murder. A manhunt begins in search of Alice for connections to the grisly deaths. Kristen and Rick are left to fend for themselves.

Jacob eventually escapes from prison by weaponizing Freddy on a guard. He makes his way to Springwood, dramatically reuniting with what’s left of his family. By the time he gets home, the manhunt has extended for him and his mom. Jacob, Alice, Rick and Kristen all end up together, barricaded in Alice’s home. The police, news, and angry parents are all outside attempting to bring the two ‘murderers’ to justice before they kill their own grandchildren.

In a final dream battle, Jacob is killed when Freddy no longer needs him. Alice is soon follow. Kristen sees Freddy going for her younger brother and distracts him by pretending to accept his offer to “kill for him”. She claws Freddy to death before clawing herself. Rick sees his sister claw herself, doesn’t know what to make of this, and forces himself to wake up. He has a dream power. He awakens to find his grandmother and father dead on the floor. His sister is bleeding out on the floor. Before Kristen dies, she tells her brother “Don’t be afraid of your dreams!” The very idea of Freddy dies with Kristen. In a way, Alice and Jacob have succeeded in taking him to their graves, but at a huge cost.

Before any evidence is discovered, a newscaster accidentally starts a fire to the home and it engulfs into flames, burning everybody inside, including Rick, while the cameras and authorities watch on.

10 years later, a new killer emerges, exacting revenge on the people of Springwood for killing him: Rick Jordan.


First time writing Elm Street fanfic, and it shows. Haha, but yes, if they continue the story, they can begin anew with an inhabitant of the original Elm Street teens taking over the role of dream demon. The twist is he had no clue about who Freddy was because no one around him wanted him to know. His ascension to demon coincides with resentment of the police and the townspeople who watched him burn to death. This effectively ends Freddy as a character, begins the series anew with a different killer, a different mythology, and so many places to go. I figure it references the original films, while also avoiding being a straight retelling and redoing of popular scenes from the 1984 original. Freddy goes out on a final high note, using practical effects in earlier dreams and state of the art CGI in the later dreams which depict him as younger, stronger and more gruesome than ever.

Final kill count would be 10, which is also the entry in the series if you count the 2010 remake.