David F. Sandberg: Might be fun to make a Critters or Elm Street movie

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

After making his feature directorial debut with the New Line Cinema release LIGHTS OUT, David F. Sandberg was immediately offered the chance to make a franchise film for the studio – the Conjuring Universe entry ANNABELLE: CREATION. LIGHTS OUT managed to gross almost $150 million worldwide on a budget under $5 million and ANNABELLE: CREATION is now the #1 film at the domestic box office, so obviously this working relationship is going quite well for both Sandberg and New Line.

During a reddit discussion of his ANNABELLE prequel, Sandberg indicated that he is interested in continuing working on genre films with the company. When asked if he'd like to contribute to a different franchise or perhaps remake an older horror film, Sandberg replied: 

I don't know. I've been thinking about what fun franchises New Line has like A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and CRITTERS. Might be fun if you took something like that in a different direction from previous installments. Like instead of remaking NIGHTMARE you do some continuation of it in the same world kind of thing."

The fact that Sandberg mentions being open to working in the world of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is particularly intriguing, because THE CONJURING 2 writer David Leslie Johnson has already written a screenplay for a new reboot of that property. If New Line is ready to start pushing the project into production, they might actually be talking to Sandberg about directing it – there could be more going on here than the director just daydreaming about franchise possibilities.

Or maybe Sandberg is just daydreaming. We haven't heard anything about more CRITTERS being made since it was announced that Blue Ribbon Content would be making a web series based on the franchise's ravenous little aliens. That was back in 2014, and the web series still hasn't happened.

On his Twitter account, Sandberg has said that his reddit post was just a "hypothetical reply". 

Thanks, though to be clear no plans exist. It was a hypothetical reply on reddit that somehow became news 🙂 https://t.co/XuCceiN2CM

— David F. Sandberg (@ponysmasher) August 14, 2017

We'll have to wait to see if his musings lead to anything. I'd be more interested in a new CRITTERS movie than in another reboot of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, but if either of these things happen I would be glad to see Sandberg at the helm.