20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise

As is clear in the original ending, Wes Craven had absolutely no desire for there to be any Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. By this point, the Halloween and Friday the 13th franchises were growing strong, but Craven didn’t want Nightmare to turn into something like that. 

Unfortunately, that wasn’t really his decision.

When New Line funded a sequel, Craven turned down directing duties. Not only did he just not like the franchise idea, but he was against having Freddy attacking people in the real world and manipulating the main character into committing murders, both of which became plot points in the sequel. 

Then the second movie grossed even more than the original, and once it became clear there would be a third, Craven got back on board as screenwriter. As he admits itself, this was largely for financial reasons. “It was important for me in a business sense that I was able to negotiate a percentage point in the sequels I didn’t have from the original film," he said.

Craven intended Nightmare on Elm Street 3 to be the proper conclusion, but once again it wasn’t up to him, and New Line just released a fourth movie the following year. Craven would later mock the Nightmare sequels in Scream, where Drew Barrymore notes that the original movie was great but the rest sucked.