Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund pitches what reboot should be

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET is one of the premiere horror franchises, up there with – I'd argue – even the classic Universal pantheon. It's an ingenious premise (can't sleep or you'll die!) with one of the most imaginative and iconic horror villains, the burnt-faced dream demon Freddy Krueger, played with malicious glee by Robert Englund.

But NIGHTMARE has had a bit of a rough go of it lately, ending on some lackluster sequels (barring FREDDY VS. JASON, which I'll defend to the death), and an extremely underwhelming remake a little over a decade ago. And unfortunately – besides a cameo on the sitcom THE GOLDBERGS – Englund hasn't had a chance to wear the classic make-up or clawed hand in almost 20 years (since the aforementioned FREDDY VS. JASON).

But the website TooFab – who were interviewing Englund about his travel series, TRUE TERROR WITH ROBERT ENGLUND – talked a bit about where he thinks the series could go from here, especially since the Craven estate now has the rights to the franchise, and are taking pitches about potential remake ideas. You can see his full response in the video at the top of the article, but here is what he had to say about what the NIGHTMARE remake should be in the modern era:

Because our society now is more damaged because of the opioid crisis, because of incredible diverse, because of the openness now with gender and sexuality, those kids now have to be different than the kids from the original "Nightmare" and someone has to write a different batch of kids and Freddy needs to be a different kind of evil. His evil needs to be, he needs to toy with what they like in the culture.

If they redid Nightmare 2, for instance, and really deal with the subtext, Freddy toying with that boy's sexuality. But the fact that we're much more comfortable with that now, I think it would be really fun to have Freddy play with one kid who's gay. Maybe one boy is not. Play with them. Tempt them. Force him out of the closet or back into the closet and we can do that. Audiences would accept that now. Freddy would do that because he's in your head. But it is going to take somebody very clever to to do that.

Again, you look at Nightmare 3, the fan favorite "Dream Warriors," you want to take that place where they all meet and maybe some of the kids are there for drug rehab. You have to push all those things a little further. Whatever their problems are, really have fun with one of the kids being OCD and have Freddy exploit that? I think we could because it's 2020 now. One kid could be autistic. Get an autistic actor and really play with that and how Freddy would torment him. But I think that's the kind of way you have to freshen it.

While there are no firm plans for a NIGHTMARE reboot at the moment, you can check out Englund's new show TRUE TERROR WITH ROBERT ENGLUND Wednesdays @10pm on the Travel Channel!

So what do you guys think? Do you agree with Englund? And if not, where would you like to see the series go? Either way, sound off below!