Jane Schoenbrun Wants To Direct ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street,’ and Freddy Krueger Fans Should Be Paying Attention

Horror has been having a moment of reinvention lately, with acclaimed indie filmmakers increasingly circling the genre’s biggest, most untouchable properties. Studios chasing that same energy have started opening their doors to directors who once would have seemed like unlikely fits for a mainstream slasher revival.

That shift has now put one of the genre’s most distinctive rising voices in the conversation for reviving one of horror’s most iconic villains. It’s a move that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago, and yet it fits perfectly with where the genre currently stands.

Jane Schoenbrun is actively trying to land a meeting to direct one of the competing ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ reboots currently in development at Warner Bros. and Paramount. Speaking with ScreenRant at the Los Angeles premiere of their film ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,’ Schoenbrun made their interest explicit, saying, “I’m trying to get a meeting on this Nightmare on Elm Street thing. I would love to do that.”

Schoenbrun is best known for genre-bending, deeply personal horror films exploring trans and queer identity, including the acclaimed 2024 psychological horror feature ‘I Saw the TV Glow.’ Their latest film, a psychosexual and meta take on the slasher subgenre starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, has only strengthened their standing within the genre’s current creative renaissance.

The timing of Schoenbrun’s interest lines up with an unusually chaotic moment for the ‘Elm Street’ property. Paramount is developing its own reboot under its newly launched genre label, Paramount Primal, having licensed the rights to Wes Craven’s original screenplay directly from his estate, with widow Iya Labunka and son Jonathan Craven producing.

Complicating matters, Warner Bros. holds the international rights to the franchise while Paramount controls the domestic ones, a split that has become a real point of tension amid the stalled Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. Rather than wait for that deal to close, Warner Bros. executives Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy have reportedly opted to develop their own separate ‘Elm Street’ project and have already been in talks with ‘Evil Dead Rise’ director Lee Cronin to write, produce, and direct it.

That leaves Paramount’s version, the one Schoenbrun appears to be targeting, still searching for a director as the studio continues meeting with filmmakers. Whoever ultimately takes the job faces a daunting task, given that Robert Englund’s portrayal of Freddy Krueger remains so definitive that even 2010’s attempted reboot struggled to escape the shadow of the original.

Schoenbrun stepping into that world would mark a notable tonal shift from their more experimental, meta approach to horror seen in ‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.’ Still, given the way their work consistently reexamines slasher conventions rather than simply replicating them, a more traditional studio slasher could offer an interesting new challenge for the filmmaker.

With two competing ‘Elm Street’ projects racing forward independently of one another, whichever studio locks down its director first could gain a real head start in getting Freddy Krueger back on the big screen. For now, all eyes are on whether Schoenbrun actually lands that meeting they’re chasing.

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