Freddy vs. Freddy Is Over: Warner Bros.’ Rival ‘Elm Street’ Movie With Lee Cronin Is Dead

Warner Bros.' competing A Nightmare on Elm Street project with director Lee Cronin is no longer moving forward.

via: Dread Central

Dread Central can exclusively report that Warner Bros.’ competing A Nightmare on Elm Street project, which had Lee Cronin in talks to write and direct, is no longer moving forward.

Paramount Primal is now the only company developing a new Elm Street film.

If you missed this bizarre little studio war, we previously reported that Warner Bros. and Paramount were racing to develop separate versions of the franchise. Kim Masters’ reporting for Puck detailed Warner’s interest in the Evil Dead Rise and The Mummy filmmaker, alongside a plan to beat Paramount into production.

At the time, I’d heard similar things from my own sources. I’ve since been able to confirm that the competing development effort was real. This wasn’t just people throwing Freddy’s name around.

Paramount had announced its deal with the Wes Craven estate in July, licensing the U.S. rights for a new film drawing from Craven’s original screenplay. Iya Labunka, Jonathan Craven, and attorney Marc Toberoff are producing, with Paramount Primal’s J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules executive producing.

And the estate’s involvement is extremely important to us horror fans. The people entrusted with Craven’s legacy chose this team to carry it forward. As a horror fan, that’s a pretty big deal to me.

Warner Bros., which retained the international rights, wasn’t happy about Paramount’s plans. From what I’ve learned, Michael De Luca pushed to get Warner’s own version into production before Paramount could make theirs, with the looming merger adding urgency to that effort.

Well, the merger happened.

Paramount completed the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, bringing the companies under the same ownership. As TheWrap reported, De Luca and Pam Abdy were pushed out in the transition.

And now that rival Elm Street project is dead. Paramount Primal’s film remains in development with the Craven estate.

There’s another piece of this I want to clear up again: the idea that Paramount has to make a word-for-word or shot-for-shot remake of the first movie is horseshit.

As I explained in our earlier coverage, drawing from Craven’s original 1984 screenplay does not mean recreating that movie scene for scene. Those are very different things, and from what I’ve learned, there’s room here to do something different.

What that looks like is still the question. A fresh interpretation of the original? A standalone story? We don’t have a confirmed writer or director to announce, much less enough information to tell you what kind of nightmare they’re cooking up.

Personally, I still love the idea of Jane Schoenbrun taking a swing at Freddy. The I Saw the TV Glow and Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma filmmaker has already expressed interest in the project, and we previously reported that Parker Finn had also been circling Elm Street at one point.

Finn remains another of my top choices. As we reported last week, David Bruckner is taking over Smile 3 while Finn works on his Possession remake, so his availability is another matter entirely.

But now that the studios are done fighting over Freddy, hopefully we can get back to the interesting part: who’s going to make him scary again?

Who would you like to see direct the next A Nightmare on Elm Street?