20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About Stephen King

6. ...But Turned Down The Chance To Do Nightmare On Elm Street 5

New Line Cinema were in something of a pickle. During the late eighties the horror boom had reached maximum capacity: cinemas, video stores and bookshops with flooded with scary films and books of varying quality. Chancers wanting some of that sweet Stephen King and Nightmare On Elm Street money were cashing in with crappy knock-offs.

The studio were struggling to come up with a new direction for the Nightmare On Elm Street series after the fourth movie, and so they turned to the obvious person: Frank Miller, the somewhat misogynistic and fascistic comic artist/writer behind Sin City, The Dark Knight Returns and the classic seventies run on Daredevil.

Okay, so before they turned to Miller (who had worked on early script drafts for the Robocop sequels), they also offered Stephen King the chance to write and direct A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. King was taking a break from the horror genre for personal reasons, and didn't much fancy the job regardless, so he ended up passing. Maybe they never saw Maximum Overdrive...