Freddy vs. Freddy Is Over: Warner Bros.’ Rival ‘Elm Street’ Movie Is Dead [Exclusive]

The fight over who gets to bring Freddy Krueger back is over.

Dread Central can exclusively report that Warner Bros.’ competing A Nightmare on Elm Street project, which had Lee Cronin in talks to write and direct, is no longer moving forward. Paramount Primal is now the only company developing a new Elm Street film.

If you missed this bizarre little studio war, we previously reported that Warner Bros. and Paramount were racing to develop separate versions of the franchise. Kim Masters’ reporting for Puck detailed Warner’s interest in the Evil Dead Rise and The Mummy filmmaker, alongside a plan to beat Paramount into production.

At the time, I’d heard similar things from my own sources. I’ve since been able to confirm that the competing development effort was real. This wasn’t just people throwing Freddy’s name around.

Paramount had announced its deal with the Wes Craven estate in July, licensing the U.S. rights for a new film drawing from Craven’s original screenplay. Iya Labunka, Jonathan Craven, and attorney Marc Toberoff are producing, with Paramount Primal’s J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules executive producing.

And the estate’s involvement is extremely important to us horror fans. The people entrusted with Craven’s legacy chose this team to carry it forward. As a horror fan, that’s a pretty big deal to me.