Paramount has closed a deal for the U.S. rights to adapt Wes Craven’s original screenplay for “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” The new movie will come from Paramount Primal, the studio’s new genre label, run by “Barbarian” producers J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules.
They will be licensing the title from the Wes Crave estate, which includes Iya Labunka and Jonathan Craven. According to Paramount, the new film will be produced by Labunka, Craven and Marc Toberoff, with Lifshitz and Margules executive producing for Paramount Primal.
The film is in “priority development,” with plot specifics not revealed, beyond that it will be set in the world of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and that it will be based on Wes Craven’s original screenplay.
“Jonathan and I are so excited to be partnering with J.D. and Rafi along with the terrific team they’ve assembled at Paramount Primal. We look forward to bringing the world of Wes Craven’s ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ to a new and completely engaged generation of fans,” Labunka said in a Monday statement. “We know that Wes would have been thrilled to see how horror is taking its long overdue place in the cultural canon. We can’t wait for all of us to sit together in a dark theatre — around the campfire of today — as the next chapter of the ‘Nightmare’ story unfolds.”
“We can’t remember a time before we were fans of Wes Craven. The fact that Iya and Jonathan have entrusted us with this opportunity to help usher a new story into this world is an honor beyond words,” Lifshitz and Margules agreed. “We look forward to working alongside them to bring a terrifying new nightmare to audiences everywhere — and to welcome Freddy home.”
Craven’s original “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was released by fledgling New Line Cinema in 1984, full of dreamy imagery and an unforgettable villain in Robert Englund’s Freddy Krueger, a serial killer who returns to kill children in their sleep. It made $57 million on a budget of $1.1 million and inspired a franchise that consisted of six sequels, a television anthology series (“Freddy’s Nightmares”), endless merchandise, a 1-900 number and a DJ Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince song. The last films in the franchise were 2003’s “Friday the 13th” crossover “Freddy vs. Jason” and 2010’s “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, produced by Michael Bay.
