A Nightmare on Elm Street currently in rights limbo
Everyone’s favorite dream demon is caught up in a Hollywood rights battle.
A Nightmare on Elm Street is a franchise that’s been in deep sleep for 16 years since its last entry, and Paramount has joined forces with the Craven Estate with a plan to use Wes Craven’s original screenplay to create a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
However, their plan has cracks in it, as the Craven Estate only has the domestic rights to the Elm Street screenplay. Warner Bros. / New Line owns the international distribution rights, and they are actively developing their own Elm Street movie that could compete with Paramount’s.
This unstable ownership matches what Robert England told Indiewire last November as to why there hasn’t been any new projects since 2010.
“There are so many people involved who have a piece of the action. When Wes passed away, he left an awful lot of rights to his estate,” said England. “He has many many rights that he worked out between character titles and names and plot and things like that. New Line Cinema obviously has a big hand in it. And much of that was surrendered to Ted Turner, then went to Warner Bros. So Warner Bros. has a huge piece of it.”
His statement carries more weight as the state of these rights get tested by their owners. This is all occurring as Paramount’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros. is being delayed till next year.
Pick News reported that, “Sources with knowledge of the matter think Paramount figured that by the time their movie got underway, the WarnerMount deal would have closed and Warners would be compelled to release the Paramount version overseas. But Warners’ Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy didn’t care for that plan. Now they’re looking to make their own movie, which they can only distribute overseas, and are in talks with Lee Cronin to produce, write, and direct.”
Paramount’s project is ahead due to it already being officially announced, and Warner Bros. project is still not set to happen despite having Lee Cronin’s name attached.
