Is there going to be a new Freddy Krueger movie in 2027? The Evil Dead Rise director's version is dead — another one isn't

Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street came out in 1984, with Robert Englund as Freddy, the burned killer who murders teenagers in their dreams. Englund played him in eight films, the last being Freddy vs. Jason in 2003. New Line Cinema remade the original in 2010 with Jackie Earle Haley in the glove, and Freddy has been asleep since.

Is there a new Freddy movie in 2027?

There is a new Nightmare on Elm Street in development at Paramount. It has no writer, no director, no cast and no release date, so as of November 2026, nothing has Freddy dated for 2027 or any other year.

Why there were two

The rights split in 2019. Thirty-five years after the original screenplay, US copyright law let Craven's estate take back the US rights. It's the same rule attorney Marc Toberoff used to win Victor Miller back the rights to Friday the 13th, and Toberoff is now one of the new film's producers. New Line, part of Warner Bros., kept the international rights.

In July 2026, Paramount licensed the US rights from the estate, run by Craven's widow, Iya Labunka, and his son, Jonathan Craven. It's the first film for Paramount Primal, the genre label run by J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules, who produced Barbarian and Weapons. They said they were honored to help "welcome Freddy home."

Early reports called it a remake of Craven's original script. Paramount pushed back.

"It's not true that this is a shot-by-shot remake," Paramount told JoBlo.

The film, Paramount said, "is set in the world of the original A Nightmare on Elm Street story."

Lee Cronin's version

Lee Cronin, who directed Evil Dead Rise and this year's The Mummy, had been open about wanting the job. Asked by Variety in April about his dream projects, he said, "I would find it very hard not to have a swing at ol' Freddy Krueger."

Freddy, he added, "haunted my nightmares throughout my entire childhood and still pops up about four times a year."

At the end of July, Puck's Kim Masters reported that Warner Bros. film chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, unhappy with Paramount's deal, were developing their own Elm Street, with Cronin in talks to write and direct. Because of the rights split, Warner could only have released it outside the US.

Don't miss: How many Nightmare on Elm Street remakes are there, and which one just got killed off?

Why it died

Paramount completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, and De Luca and Abdy were pushed out. On November 10, Dread Central reported that Warner's Elm Street "is no longer moving forward."

Dread Central: "Paramount Primal is now the only company developing a new Elm Street film."

With Warner now part of Paramount, both halves of Freddy's rights sit under one roof.

Who wants to direct it

Dread Central says Parker Finn had been circling it, though he's busy with a remake of Possession while David Bruckner takes over Smile 3 for him. Jane Schoenbrun has been asking openly. At the Los Angeles premiere of Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Schoenbrun told ScreenRant, "I'm trying to get a meeting on this Nightmare on Elm Street thing."

They're not the first to volunteer. Mike Flanagan pitched himself on Twitter back in 2019: "Put me in, coach… I've got a pitch!"

Previously we wrote: Blood Simple director's cut differences: what the Coens cut and who the man introducing it really is