Movies
‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ Is Getting Remade… Again
New Line plans to bring the Dream Demon back from the dead.
In 2010 Warner Bros./New Line Cinema released their Platinum Dunes-produced reboot of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street, which didn’t exactly raise any eyebrows at the box office – or with fans of the 30 year old franchise.
Now, just 5 years after being resurrected, Freddy Krueger is getting yet another fresh start.
This pretty reputable tracking board dropped a bomb Wednesday night reporting that New Line is planning to remake A Nightmare On Elm Street once again. As of Thursday morning, we here at Bloody Disgusting can confirm this information.
What’s interesting to note is that Platinum Dunes isn’t listed as a producer on the project, which is still vacant.
As for a writer, New Line has tapped Orphan scribe David Leslie Johnson to bring the red-and-green sweater/fedora wearing Freddy Krueger back to the big screen.
Toby Emmerich, Walter Hamada, and Dave Neustadter will oversee for New Line.
For those unacquainted with Johnson, the site explains that just earlier this week was announced to write Warner Bros. Dungeons and Dragons adaptation, fits the series like a glove with razors, as the former “Walking Dead” writer is forging a new presence in the horror space. The Wrath of the Titans scribe is next penning James Wan’s Conjuring sequel The Conjuring: The Enfield Poltergeist and Disney’s horror Something Wicked This Way Comes.
That’s quite a resume.
Samuel Bayer directed the 2010 reboot that introduced Jackie Earle Haley as the new Freddy. While Haley did a bang up job, he just wasn’t Freddy. Robert Englund played the iconic slasher from Wes Craven’s 1984 A Nightmare On Elm Street through several films, concluding in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason.
The biggest hurdle New Line is going to have to overcome is finding a new Freddy, again. If you look at various other slasher franchises – Friday the 13th, Halloween and even Texas Chain Saw Massacre – it’s easy to throw someone else behind a mask. With Elm Street, it’s the one slasher with personality, and a vital look that sells the character. Jackie Earle Haley was never going to be “better than,” and thus the impact of the character weakened on screen.
Some of you are going to laugh, but here’s my solution: I’d love to see a female Krueger slashing up teens, turning their dreams into nightmares. It would be a fresh take on both the character and slasher subgenre.
I’ve actually read Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer’s screenplays for the 2010 remake. They introduced the brilliant micro-napping, which was underutilized and realized like shit on screen. Bayer, frankly, is an awful director. The one thing that really plagued the reboot, though, was the lack of creativity. It went for primal scares and mimicked scenes from Craven’s classic. After 30 years, we’ve seen Freddy turn people into cockroaches and pizza, so the mere idea that a rotating room was going to thrill us was just silly. Going forward, I hope the new writer will inject some serious creativity so that the title actually carries some meaning. Let’s see some fucked up nightmares this time around…
There’s a lot of rich mythology that has barely been touched, but it’s constantly a victim to studio’s focusing on selling to the teens who are hoping for one good scare on a date. It’s hard to sell an R-rated slasher, and it’s a business, so sometimes the art suffers. But other times art can elevate a film to a new place, further the genre, and revitalize fans’ faith in the franchise. This has to be that film. This has to be a unique vision. I am very curious to see who they hire to direct – especially now that James Wan is Warner Bros.’ go-to guy with his Conjuring franchise. Anyone want to take some wagers?
Anyways, this is a good thing, believe it or not. New Line Cinema is “The house that Freddy built,” and it’s been a damn shame to see them turning their back on the genre that made them who they are today. New Line’s identity is shrouded in horror, and the fact that they sold out Jason Voorhees to Paramount just to make Interstellar still rubs me the wrong way. Maybe this is the film that brings New Line back to their roots, and thus revives our beloved genre in the production house that once lived and breathed horror?
And one more thought for the naysayers: It’s this or nothing. Would you rather Freddy stay dead forever? Tell me below…

Movies
‘Goblin’ – Will Forte Joins A24’s Raunchy Little Monster Movie
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”


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