Movies
New Line Started Filming ‘Elm Street 4: The Dream Master’ Before Hiring a Director
After watching “Never Sleep Again”, I thought I knew everything there was to know about the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Turns out, there are even more wild and crazy stories yet to be told.
While it may look as if New Line Cinema had spent bucko bucks on Wes Craven‘s slasher and the several sequels, it was actually a low(er) budget franchise that was delivered in the same vein as Lionsgate’s SAW. Sequels were being pumped out as quickly as one-per-year, with the studio working at lightning speed to cash in on Freddy Krueger’s break into pop culture. In fact, they were working so quickly, that it’s being alleged that they started production on A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master before they had even hired a director!
In an interview with Midnight’s Edge, director Tom McLoughlin shared this shocking anecdote: after completing Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI, New Line offered him the job on Dream Warriors. His one caveat was that he wanted creative control. The studio couldn’t adhere to the demand, specifically because they had already begun filming…without a director.
“When I finished Friday, I was offered Nightmare 4 and went to New Line, met with them, and I said, ‘I love Freddy, I would love to do one of these, but I really want to do what I just did, where I had creative control’,” he explained. “And they go, ‘Well, we’re already shooting.’ ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, we’re already shooting, we’re shooting like two different units for the visual effects’ and something else, puppets or something. And I said, ‘Without a director?’ ‘Yeah, we kind of know how we’re going to make these things.’ And I went, ‘That’s not the way I work.’ So I turned it down, which of course made (Nightmare 4 director) Renny Harlin‘s career.”
As he notes, Harlin came aboard to direct the follow-up to Dream Warriors and would go on to direct Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea, before returning to the genre with Exorcist: The Beginning and The Covenant. And as a bit of added irony, McLoughlin was initially attached to Exorcist: The Beginning when it was in development under the title Dominion. What a small world we live in.
Digressing, as shocking as this story is, I actually sort of love it. While many projects can suffer from over-development, it’s exciting and refreshing to see films pushed forward with nothing more than psychotic creative energy. New Line knew what the franchise was, just like Lionsgate knew was SAW was, and by keeping the pedal to the metal they were able to drive home one of the greatest horror franchises of all time.
Movies
’28 Years Later’ – Ralph Fiennes, Jodie Comer, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson Join Long Awaited Sequel
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland (Annihilation, Men), the director and writer behind 2002’s hit horror film 28 Days Later, are reteaming for the long-awaited sequel, 28 Years Later. THR reports that the sequel has cast Jodie Comer (Alone in the Dark, “Killing Eve”), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kraven the Hunter), and Ralph Fiennes (The Menu).
The plan is for Garland to write 28 Years Later and Boyle to direct, with Garland also planning on writing at least one more sequel to the franchise – director Nia DaCosta is currently in talks to helm the second installment.
No word on plot details as of this time, or who Comer, Taylor-Johnson, and Fiennes may play.
28 Days Later received a follow up in 2007 with 28 Weeks Later, which was executive produced by Boyle and Garland but directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo. Now, the pair hope to launch a new trilogy with 28 Years Later. The plan is for Garland to write all three entries, with Boyle helming the first installment.
Boyle and Garland will also produce alongside original producer Andrew Macdonald and Peter Rice, the former head of Fox Searchlight Pictures, the division of one-time studio Twentieth Century Fox that originally backed the British-made movie and its sequel.
The original film starred Cillian Murphy “as a man who wakes up from a coma after a bicycle accident to find England now a desolate, post-apocalyptic collapse, thanks to a virus that turned its victims into raging killers. The man then navigates the landscape, meeting a survivor played by Naomie Harris and a maniacal army major, played by Christopher Eccleston.”
Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer) is on board as executive producer, though the actor isn’t set to appear in the film…yet.
Talks of a third installment in the franchise have been coming and going for the last several years now – at one point, it was going to be titled 28 Months Later – but it looks like this one is finally getting off the ground here in 2024 thanks to this casting news. Stay tuned for more updates soon!
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