Robert Englund Regrets Not Doing a Freddy Krueger Prequel

Robert Englund recently revealed details on a planned Nightmare on Elm Street prequel focused on Freddy Krueger that never happened. Englund, who is of course best known for his role as the serial killer-turned-dream demon, talked at Dragon Con (per ComicBook.com) about the film, which he said was in the works but “sort of got lost” after New Line Cinema was acquired by Turner Broadcasting System before its merger with Time Warner. Highlights of his comments are below:

On the plans for the prequel: “There’s some great internet Youtube versions of a kind of prequel Freddy, or early Freddy, that I like that are really interesting. If I could go back in time, there was a script kicking around — it might have been called Krueger: The First Kills — but it’s not the Tobe Hooper version of the prequel.”

On what the film would have been: “[It would have been] Freddy and the children, two bumbling cops trying to catch him, and then these two sharp lawyers. And these are the real stars of the project, [they] get Freddy out of jail. But you see Freddy in prison, you see him meeting with his lawyers, you see Freddy in the courtroom. You see the lawyers going back and forth with the prosecution and getting Freddy off, and getting away with, obviously, murder. [Freddy would then] burn like Joan of Arc by the vigilante parents who just can’t stomach this injustice anymore … The rumor was it was going to be John McNaughton directing that, the great director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, starring Michael Rooker. And I was excited. I was excited, and for a brief second of time, there was some validity to that project.”

On the film never coming about: “But that, that I guess I could consider a regret. That would have been when it would have been fun to do, and I was still young enough to do it. I had some ideas — I wanted to dye my hair red like I did in Freddy vs. Jason — things like that. I had some ideas I wanted to play with. That’s probably my only regret.”