Last November, Robert Englund had shared his thoughts on why there hasn’t been any movement on the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise in the past sixteen years. Englund told Indiewire at the time, “There are so many people involved who have a piece of the action.”

“When Wes passed away, he left an awful lot of rights to his estate,” Englund explained. “He has many many rights that he worked out between character titles and names and plot and things like that. New Line Cinema obviously has a big hand in it. And much of that was surrendered to Ted Turner, then went to Warner Bros. So Warner Bros. has a huge piece of it.”

We bring this up because Englund was spot on. And things have only gotten more interesting since he made those comments last year. We had recently learned that Paramount has joined forces with the Craven Estate to make a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie based on Wes Craven’s original screenplay for the original movie, but here’s where things get real interesting.

While the Craven Estate has the domestic rights to Craven’s original Elm Street screenplay, Warner Bros./New Line actually retains the international rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street. And Puck News reports this week that Warner Bros. is actively developing their own Nightmare on Elm Street movie to compete with the announced Paramount project!

Of course, what’s particularly interesting about this whole mess is that Paramount is actively attempting to buy Warner Bros., a sale which has been delayed until at least next year.

Puck reports, “Sources with knowledge of the matter think Paramount figured that by the time their movie got underway, the WarnerMount deal would have closed and Warners would be compelled to release the Paramount version overseas. But Warners’ Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy didn’t care for that plan. Now they’re looking to make their own movie, which they can only distribute overseas, and are in talks with Lee Cronin to produce, write, and direct.”

So what we have is a situation where Paramount is attempting to make one Nightmare on Elm Street movie for the domestic market while Warner Bros. is attempting to make an entirely different Elm Street film project for the international market. The obvious solution here is for both entities to work with one another and bring all the rights together to make one proper Elm Street movie that can play in both markets, which could very well end up being the case if the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger does end up taking place late next year.

In the meantime, it seems that WB and Paramount are in a race to beat one another to the punch. While the Paramount project has been officially announced, we must note that the Warner Bros./Lee Cronin project has not. We only have the Puck News report to go on, but for what it’s worth, that report lines up with what Bloody Disgusting has been hearing lately.

Unfortunately, Nightmare on Elm Street isn’t the only franchise that is mired in complicated rights issues. All of this sounds eerily similar to the situation with Friday the 13th, which has its rights split up between several different entities. The only thing coming soon on that front is “Crystal Lake,” a prequel television series from A24 and Peacock that managed to bring all the rights owners together. Even still, don’t expect a series about Jason Voorhees rampaging through the woods. The series centers instead on Jason’s mother, Pamela Voorhees.

Making a proper new Friday the 13th movie, well, that’s proving to be as difficult as it is to make a proper new Nightmare on Elm Street movie. At a time it was said that nothing could kill either Jason or Freddy, but complicated legal issues are damn sure trying their best.

Stay tuned for more on all things Nightmare on Elm Street as this all develops.