The Studio Wasn’t Prepared for Elm Street’s Nightmare to Become a Franchise (Exclusive)

No discussion of New Line Cinema is complete without the phrase “The House That Freddy Built.” While attributing New Line’s success (and eventual acquisition by Warner Bros.) solely to the “A Nightmare On Elm Street” franchise may be a stretch, There’s no doubt that “Elm Street” saved the studio and put it on the mapand that the series’ tremendous success at the box office and its cultural impact helped achieve future victories such as “Lord of the Rings” films. and “The Conjuring” franchise.. On the one hand, the boom in the “Elm Street” movies is another example of the strength and popularity of the horror genre as a whole. It’s a lesson that mainstream Hollywood seems to constantly forget and relearn. After all, the 2025 box office wouldn’t be anywhere near what it is without him Great horror movies like “Sinners” and “Weapons.” However, Freddy Krueger’s ubiquity during the 1980s and early 1990s surpassed even the average hit horror film. Freddy became a real successor to Other horror icons such as Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and othersThey appear not only in the film series, but also in spin-off television shows, comic books, games, and other related materials.

Of course, there’s no way to predict which movie and character might be a cultural hit. Freddy’s popularity even puzzled his creator, Wes Craven, as… 1994 meta sequel “Wes Craven’s New Nightmare” I tried to get to the bottom of why this guy was so big. Considering how quickly New Line put a Nightmare on Elm Street sequel into production after the original film was a box office hit in late 1984, one can assume that the studio at least had an idea that Freddy could be big business. However, according to a recent exclusive interview with Jack Shoulder, the director of “A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge,” that was not the case. As Scholder points out, New Line Cinema wasn’t ready for “Elm Street” to become a franchise, and that shortsightedness early in the series led to some issues with “Freddy’s Revenge,” things that almost prevented Freddy from continuing his reign of terror.

According to Scholder, when New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye came across Craven’s script for “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” the dollar signs weren’t necessarily what Shaye saw in it. Scholder explained:

“I remember when Bob first picked up the script from Wes, because he was running things through me… I was one of the people he was listening to. (…) He was very excited about the script. He wasn’t like, ‘Oh, this script is going to make a lot of money.’ He said, ‘This is going to make a great movie.’ That was kind of his attitude. He loved the premise and the way Wes worked it. And then when the movie opened, it made the biggest gross. Total I think that weekend, the head of distribution said on Monday ‘start writing part 2 now’.

One bit of confusion regarding the “Elm Street” sequel, of course, is that the film was never intended to support a continuing story. In the final days of filming “Elm Street,” Shay had the foresight to ask Craven to film some of the open-ended closing moments. However, as Scholder notes, sequels in those days were “sort of looked down upon,” and New Line’s distribution department believed that if a sequel made 70% of what the original made, it would be considered a success. In other words, today’s prevailing mentality, that sequels can (and perhaps should) outperform their predecessors, has not yet come to the fore. As Scholder continued:

“The hope was that (Nightmare 2) would do well enough that there would be a ‘Nightmare 3’. The idea of ​​a ‘Nightmare 4’ nobody went for. Maybe in their dreams they were hoping they could make another movie out of it… and there was never any pressure on me to make a movie that would be a hit.”

Although the concept of franchises was still very new in the mid-1980s, some tropes were already starting to emerge, one of which was that there should be a returning character or characters in a sequel if possible. However, while New Line Cinema certainly wanted Freddy Krueger to remain the supernatural villain of “Elm Street,” They almost brought back actor Robert Englund to reprise the role. As Scholder recalls, the studio considered the title and character more important than the actor at this point, similar to how other villains like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees swapped performers in their sequels:

“They just wanted to direct a script called ‘Nightmare on Elm Street 2’ with a character named Freddy, not necessarily played by Robert Englund.”

Fortunately, Englund joined the “Freddy’s Revenge” movie. However, the film will end up showing a different kind of Krueger than we saw in Craven’s film. This Freddy will be more verbose (although not entirely comedic yet), and instead of invading the dreams of kids on Elm Street, he’ll try to break into the real world by invading the dreams of (and possessing) Jesse Walsh (Mark Patton). This change in rules makes “Freddy’s Revenge” interestingly unique in retrospect, But it caused some problems for the film’s initial reputation among fans. This also shows that no one at New Line is thinking about the longevity of the series, as Scholder explained:

“The rules were (there was) a guy called Freddy, who killed teenagers when they were sleeping. That was the rule, that was the rule. (…) This (movie) doesn’t quite fit, because they broke the rule, and that Freddy goes out into the world. Freddy doesn’t do that. Because if Freddy did that, you wouldn’t have a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, because you wouldn’t have to sleep to be killed by Freddy. So this “The idea is a dead end.”

Scholder is right in saying that a sequel that followed the rules laid out in “Freddy’s Revenge” would have been a dead end for the series, especially since it would have taken away much of what became the franchise’s hallmarks. However, the benefits of creative freedom afforded to Scholder and company in “Freddy’s Revenge,” along with New Line only looking at one movie at a time and not a cinematic universe, are all qualities that today’s studios and producers might want to reconsider. It’s always good to keep an eye on the possible future, But don’t put your cart before the horse.