Robert Englund Says Wes Craven’s Kids Would Be ‘Fools’ Not To Reboot A Nightmare on Elm Street

It has been a decade since Freddy Krueger showed up in a theater, with the widely-panned A Nightmare on Elm Street remake back in 2010. Unlike his contemporary Jason Voorhees, there’s no lawsuit over the rights keeping him from returning. In an interview with Comicbook.com, the original Springwood Slasher, Robert Englund, said that Wes Craven’s kids (who own the rights) would be ‘fools’ not to reboot the series. It was reported back in November that Craven’s estate was accepting pitches for it, and Elijah Wood expressed interest in producing at one point. Here are highlights:

On what the new film should be: “Their choice is whether to go with completely original stuff or whether to reboot the franchise for another generation. That’s the decision, I think it all lies now with the Craven estate, all the rights have returned to them. And I know that both Wes’ son Jonathan and his daughter [Jessica], they’re really smart, talented people and they work in the industry, so I totally trust what they’re gonna do. I just know that there are some terrific scripts over the last, let’s say 15 years, there’s been some really interesting scripts and they’re sitting on a shelf somewhere gathering dust. And I just hope that they read all of those, as well as the new ones, because a couple of those old ones were really interesting. There’s one or two prequel scripts that are pretty interesting.”

On why a reboot would be a good idea: “Everything gets remade and everybody brings a new interpretation and a new value, sometimes better, sometimes not, but I know they’re gonna reboot the franchise. They’d be fools not to, especially with all the new technology and effects they have available now, that we can enhance this nightmare/dreamscape with. The landscape of the mind and the subconscious using stuff that we discovered during Inception or What Dreams May Come, that Robin Williams film. There’s so many new kinds of CGI and tricks that we have that would just really enhance the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.”