20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
19. Peter Jackson Wrote A Draft Of A Nightmare On Elm Street 6
Before venturing into Middle Earth, Peter Jackson broke into the industry with small horror films, and he nearly played a part in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
For the sixth instalmentl, New Line wanted to kill off Freddy, and after the success of his films Bad Taste and Meet The Feebles, the studio turned to Peter Jackson to write the screenplay. He submitted a draft for A Nightmare On Elm Street 6: Dream Lover, and it sounds way better than the version that came out.
Jackson’s idea was that kids were no longer scared of Freddy and he had turned into a joke, reflecting how by that point the franchise itself had become more comedic and audiences weren’t scared anymore. Kids in the film would actually be taking drugs to knock themselves out and enter the dream world so they could go and beat up Freddy. Because he feeds on fear, Freddy had become weak, but when he manages to kill one of these kids, he begins to return to his true form.
It’s a brilliant idea that would acknowledge the series had gone downhill and would attempt to make it scary again, but New Line wasn’t interested. At the same time, Michael DeLuca wrote his own version called Freddy’s Dead, a much less interesting sequel that the studio ended up picking over Jackson’s.