4 thrilling facts about the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise

It’s hard to believe that the last time we saw the haunting Freddy Krueger on the big screen was back in 2010. The fearsome reboot movie that was supposed to bring new life into an already aging franchise did the exact opposite. As most fans know, although the movie was critically panned, Freddy has been laid to rest ever since. Despite the lack of recent success, the original 1984 A Nightmare on Elm Street remains a classic, frightful film among avid horror movie goers. Needless to say how big of a fan are you? Why are you screaming?

The prequel that never happened

Since it never happened, you shouldn’t feel bad about not knowing about it. Naturally, there were plans for a prequel to the original A Nightmare on Elm Street. A script was posted for auction on eBay containing an unreleased story in the Nightmare franchise in which Freddy Krueger is a pawn in the murder of children. John Saxton, the actor who played Nancy’s father in the original movie, wrote a story called How The Nightmare On Elm Street All Began. It was set in 1969 and has a major plot twist, Freddy Krueger was framed by Charles Manson.

It was based on true events

Director of the original film, Wes Craven, came up with the idea for the franchise after reading several newspaper articles printed in the LA Times. The articles were about a group of Cambodian refugees escaping the reign of the Pol Pot régime. The group fled to America and within a year three of the men allegedly died in their dreams.

There were four endings to choose from  

And Freddy would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for meddling creative differences! Craven wanted his first film to stand alone. He originally wanted a happy ending with Nancy putting a stop to Krueger, but film producer Robert Shaye had other plans. He wanted to create an open ending and ultimately a total of four open endings were filmed.

Freddy was hardly in the movie at all

For a spooktacular film that was about a burnt sociopath, Freddy Krueger was only present on screen for less than seven minutes.

Do you know any other behind the scenes extras? Be sure to let us know in the comment section below.