7 Movies That Will Probably Happen After 2018 Successes
4. A Nightmare On Elm Street Soft Reboot
The 2018 Success: Halloween
2018's Halloween was a direct sequel to the first film and ignored the franchise's convoluted history, and since its debut, has absolutely killed it. Pun intended. It was a smart move to disregard every other film in the series, because not only did this make it easier for Halloween newcomers to jump onboard, it gave the movie some creative freedom, without being tied down by 40 years of confusing backstory.
Using a sequel to continue a franchise while simultaneously rebooting it is a brilliant model all-around, and Halloween is living proof that it can work, as long as the execution is competent and the marketing is clear - which it was.
No doubt other studios are looking to do something similar with their horror franchises (a genre that seems to have a knack for excessive sequels that are hard to keep track of), and A Nightmare On Elm Street is a property that exists in the same space Halloween did: a great original movie, with too many mediocre sequels. Its dream-based concept has endless potential, and it's sorely in need of some reinvigoration.
New Line Cinema actually planned an Elm Street reboot in 2015, with Orphan's David Leslie Johnson penning the script. That project has since gone dead, a possible indicator that the studio decided to see how Halloween would perform before pulling the trigger on their own soft reboot. Plus, with Friday The 13th being revived by LeBron James (and even Chucky getting a fresh start of his own) Elm Street is the one glaring omission from the horror-movie-reboot camp.
With Michael Myers back on form, there's clearly an appetite for genuinely great movies starring our favourite horror icons of old. Freddy isn't dead quite yet.