Paramount is hoping that audiences are still ready for Freddy. The studio has acquired the rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street from the estate of late creator Wes Craven, and is going full stream ahead on bringing the iconic horror franchise back on to movie screens and the dreams of horror fans everywhere.

The series was originally released by New Line Cinema, which is now an arm of Warner Bros.; while Paramount intends to merge with WB in the near future, Craven‘s estate reclaimed the rights to the original film back in 2019, under a law that allows creators to take back possession of works after 35 years has passed. Paramount now has the rights to produce new films in the franchise, with Craven‘s widow, Iya Labunka, and son Jonathan Craven as executive producers. It will be released by the studio’s new genre imprint, Paramount Primal; it will also be executive produced by Paramount Primal heads J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, who have previously produced a number of genre hits, including Weapons, Barbarian, and Companion, and by Marc Toberoff.

What Is ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ About?

Created by Craven after reading about the mysterious deaths of several Hmong refugees, A Nightmare on Elm Street centers around the teenagers of Springwood, Illinois, who have been plagued by a series of nightmarish deaths. Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) and her friends Glen (Johnny Depp) and Tina (Amanda Wyss) compare notes, and find that their dreams were all haunted by the same figure; a disfigured man with razored fingers and a striped sweater. It eventually emerges that the man is Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a janitor and alleged child murderer who escaped jail on a technicality, only to be burned to death by a mob of vigilantes. He’s now come back from the dead to enact his revenge on his killers by slaying their children in their dreams.

The movie was an enormous critical and financial hit for New Line, making their fortunes as an independent studio; many sequels followed, with varying degrees of input from Craven. Englund last played the character on-screen in Freddy vs. Jason, and has since retired from the role. The series was rebooted in 2010 with Jackie Earle Haley as Krueger; reviews were disappointing, and Krueger has stayed a half-forgotten dream ever since.

A new Nightmare on Elm Street movie is in development at Paramount. 

via Collider