A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Remake Scribe Describes How Director Butchered Script
As opposed to the Friday the 13th franchise which is on hold pending ongoing litigation, A Nightmare on Elm Street is solely owned by New Line, who are free to reboot the series at any time. While it seems the studio is putting its dollars into The Conjuring universe, a new Nightmare on Elm Street flick is still on the table, and it’s something fans have been chomping at the bit for.
Related Article: NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET Reboot Update: Is THE CONJURING Franchise Keeping Freddy in the Boiler Room?
Part of New Line’s hesitation may be the disastrous response to 2010’s Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Everyone seems to agree that film was a huge misstep—even the film’s screenwriter, Eric Heisserer. In a recent Twitter thread, the Oscar-nominated writer described how his experience on the film was an actual nightmare.
For starters, he feels his script was completely butchered by director Samuel Bayer:
“Oh man. What a lesson for me in first movies made. … I wish the script I’d written, with the two New Line execs as shepherds, would have been the movie. …the draft that we thought was going to be shot was different in many ways, some big and some subtle. This happens a lot, but I still have memories of arriving to set and recognizing nothing from the script on the shooting schedule.
“On my first day on set, a crew member told me, ‘In this intro scene for the two leads, we decided there wasn’t enough dialogue for them at this party so we took some dialogue from page 87 and put it here.’ In case you were wondering, this is NOT how it works. And that was one of so many things I saw undone.
“One of the New Line guys and I worked hard to sidestep tropes in the script. An example: Freddy appearing while two characters are driving in a car. ‘The trope we’ve seen a thousand times is: Freddy is standing in the middle of the road, and they have to swerve. Let’s be smarter.’ And we were. He can appear anywhere, and we have the advantage that you don’t know which of the two is dreaming — driver, or passenger. So, we had Freddy rise up in the back seat, taunt Quentin (driving) as he gores Nancy through the chair, blood spraying the windshield, Nancy screaming at Quentin WAKE UP and he snaps to realize he’d drifted off while driving and the two crash the car into a tree. Now they both have concussions, to complicate matters when they realize the way to kill him is to fall asleep and then wake up once they have hold of Freddy.
“What do I see on set that night? Freddy standing in the middle of the road.
“There are a thousand reasons why things like this happen, but with the right team in place, you have collaborators who plus up the project versus make it a different thing than what it was originally designed to be.
“And with so many scenes that pay homage to Wes Craven, and a story that stayed closed to the original, you’d think it would be considered a remake by everyone involved. But nope. For credit purposes, another writer got it classified as a sequel. Which infuriates me even now. Why? Because it meant Wes Craven was not given story credit. For characters and a world he invented. For a plot twist akin to Psycho that was his idea — you don’t realize Nancy is the heroine for the first act. I petitioned to have him included and lost.
“All of this a really long-winded way of saying: Yes, this should be remade. I’m not advocating my script from back then, but just have it made by people who have a love and expertise of not just NOES but horror. There are some amazing voices today for it.”
Actor Kyle Gallner, who played Quentin Smith, confirmed that the script he was given when he arrived on set was much different than Heisserer’s screenplay, which convinced him to accept the gig. Essentially, it was a bait and switch:
“The script I was sent originally was a lot different and much darker than the script I was given when I got to Chicago to actually shoot. It was the movie I thought we were going to make. I’m assuming that was Heisserer’s version. I really liked that version. I was pretty surprised when I sat down in my hotel room the night I got there and read the new draft. That was quite an interesting shoot that one… I wish there was a world where Heisserer’s version also existed. It would have been cool to see that one up on screen.”
If nothing else, 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street can be used as a template for how not to remake a beloved classic. Hopefully, New Line will do the property justice when (and if) they decide to return to Elm Street.
Synopsis:
Teenagers Nancy, Quentin, Kris, Jesse and
Dean are all neighborhood friends who begin having the same dream of a horribly
disfigured man who wears a tattered sweater and a glove made of knives. The
man, Freddy Krueger (Jackie Earle Haley), terrorizes them in their dreams, and
the only escape is to wake up. But when one of their number dies violently, the
friends realize that what happens in the dream world is real, and the only way
to stay alive is to stay awake.
Source: Arrow in the Head
Categorized:News
