‘A Nightmare On Elm Street’ Original Screenplay U.S. Rights Head To Paramount & Studio’s New Genre Label Primal Before Warner Bros Merger

Before Paramount has even swallowed up Warner Bros., the Melrose lot along with the former Boulderlight duo, J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules under their new genre label, Paramount Primal, have taken the U.S. rights to the original screenplay of A Nightmare on Elm Street. The idea is to reboot the franchise at Paramount. New Line still has international rights.

The Wes Craven estate, which includes Iya Labunka and Jonathan Craven, licensed the U.S. rights to Paramount. How did this come to be when this has been a lynchpin franchise for New Line? Why are they leaving? Essentially it boils down to copyright law which allows authors to regain rights 35 years after publication. That’s the loophole here for the Freddy Krueger original 1984 screenplay rights heading to Paramount with the Craven estate obtaining the rights again in 2019 with the help of Marc Toberoff.

The rights deal is completely unrelated to the pending Paramount-Warner Bros merger, but it’s clear Freddy will wind up ultimately under the same corporate parent, just a different label. The original A Nightmare on Elm Street starred a pre-blockbuster star in Johnny Depp as well as Robert Englund as the knived-handed slasher, Freddy Krueger. In the movie, a teenage girl uncovers the dark truth held by her parents after she and her friends become targets of the spirit of a serial killer in their dreams, in which if they die, it kills them in real life.

There were eight A Nightmare on Elm Street movies, six of them pumped out between the 1980s into the early 1990s. They were one of the key genre franchises which were the lifeblood that made New Line a vibrant studio in addition to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Austin Powers and House Party. The eight films have grossed north of $438M WW (note New Line sold off foreign on the 1980s and early 1990s films so that’s unaccounted for on Box Office Mojo). The 2003 Friday the 13th crossover, Freddy vs. Jason, is the highest grossing installment in the bunch with $116.6M while the 2010 reboot starring Rooney Mara is the second highest grossing with $115.6M. Since then on the feature side, the franchise has been dormant. Apparently, there’s a significant amount of downstream in comic books and merchandise, and video games.

Labunka, Toberoff and Craven are producing the new redo with Lifshitz and Margules EPing for Paramount Primal.

Lifshitz and Margules produced Weapons, Barbarian, Companion and Friendship under Boulderlight. The duo headed to the studio from Warner Bros in September 2025 to kick off a new genre label. Today they unveiled the name of that label which will produce “smartly budgeted films across a variety of genres, including horror, comedy, action, and grounded science fiction.”

WME, Industry Entertainment and Ziffren Brittenham LLP represent the Wes Craven estate.