The rights to the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise have gotten complicated over the years, and those complications are largely to blame for Freddy Krueger being as dead as Jason Voorhees since the Elm Street remake back in 2010. Sixteen years later, many filmmakers are hungry to get their hands on Freddy, including Mike Flanagan and Lee Cronin.
Who else would love to take a crack at the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise? Newcomer Curry Barker, whose acclaimed horror movie Obsession debuts in theaters this weekend.
Curry Barker has already been enlisted to direct the next installment in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre film franchise, and he’s hungry to add Freddy Krueger to his resume as well.
Barker tells Polygon, “Obviously, everybody wants to do Nightmare on Elm Street. It’s kind of like the hot thing right now. I don’t even know who has the rights to that or what — I hear that the rights are pretty locked tight for that movie, but man, what a concept that has endless potential of nightmares and how trippy and weird and creepy they could get.”
“I would love to take a crack at that,” Barker adds.
“I know Lee Cronin also just publicly said that he wanted to take a crack at it too,” Curry Barker also notes during his conversation with Polygon. He continues, “So I don’t know, but since you asked, that’s one that I would be excited about — probably a couple more, too.”
As Bloody Disgusting reported way back in 2019, the U.S. rights to A Nightmare on Elm Street have reverted back to Wes Craven’s estate, while Warner Bros./New Line Cinema continues to own the international rights to the franchise and its iconic killer, Freddy Krueger.
Franchise star Robert Englund told Indiewire last year, “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. 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. I know Michael Bay had been involved with some interest and also Blumhouse.”
Stay tuned for more on all things Freddy and Nightmare on Elm Street.
