Just a few weeks back, the news broke that after years of commercial and creative stasis, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise would be surging back to life, with Paramount having signed a deal with the estate of the now-deceased series originator, Wes Craven, to make a film based on his original screenplay for the first film. Now, however, it has been revealed that things are a good deal more complicated than that and that there are actually two different Nightmare on Elm Street remakes in various stages of planning and pre-production at two completely different studios.
So how exactly does something like this happen?
Well, when Paramount signed that deal with the Craven estate last month, they gained the domestic rights to adapt Craven’s original screenplay for the 1984 debut installment of the series into a new film. However, prior to that, New Line Cinema, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., had long held the international rights to the franchise and its back catalog. As such, Paramount is technically legally able to make a new film in relation to Craven’s original screenplay, while Warner Bros. is legally able to make a new installment in the franchise as a whole.
However, looming over all of this is the much larger discussion of acquisition, because Paramount is actually in the middle of buying Warner Bros. as a whole. Or rather, they are very much trying to be, despite numerous legal setbacks and delays due to concerns about monopolization. Thus, it seems as if Paramount likely entered into their deal with the Craven estate so as to gain some early traction on a new installment in the long-established franchise prior to the acquisition’s completion, with the thinking being that by the time the film actually released, they would have already swallowed up Warner Bros. and also own the international distribution rights to the film and the wider franchise.
But in direct competition with this Paramount-led riff on Craven’s original screenplay is the Warner Bros.-led reboot, which has also reportedly been fast-tracked at the studio, in the hopes that it can beat the other new Nightmare on Elm Street project to the punch, whether the acquisition is finalized by then or not. Notably, the Warner Bros-led film already has creatives attached, with Lee Cronin onboard as both writer and director.
Cronin has previously directed multiple installments of franchise horror series for Warner Bros. (Evil Dead Rise and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy) and has been extremely vocal about his love of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (he literally has characters in Evil Dead Rise debating the quality of the various sequels, agreeing that they’re all good) and his desire to make a new film in it.
So what does any of this actually mean for A Nightmare on Elm Street? Well, it kind of depends on the larger legal issues surrounding Paramount’s attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. If the acquisition goes through prior to Cronin’s project beginning production, then there’s every chance that Paramount axes that film and goes through with their own project.
The catch there would be that such a deal would allow the Paramount-led version to not have to rely exclusively on Craven’s original screenplay, which it does as of right now. However, if the acquisition continues to be delayed, Warner Bros. and Lee Cronin may well get their Nightmare on Elm Street film off the ground before Paramount ever has any say in the matter.
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