Freddy Krueger will officially return in a new installment of A Nightmare on Elm Street, bringing one of horror’s most iconic figures back to the big screen for the first time since the derided 2010 remake.

As revealed by The Hollywood Reporter and confirmed by Paramount Pictures, a deal for the U.S. rights to Wes Craven’s original screenplay of A Nightmare on Elm Street has closed. In turn, Paramount is officially moving ahead with a new Freddy Krueger movie under its new genre label, Paramount Primal.

Given the relatively early stages of development for the new Freddy Krueger movie, little is known about what it will entail and whether it will exist in the continuity of the previous films or rework things from scratch. According to The Hollywood Reporter. “No details of the new take were revealed but it has been described as being ‘set in the world of A Nightmare on Elm Street, based on the original screenplay.’”

The ambiguity of this logline and the years that have passed since Freddy terrorized Elm Street leaves the door wide open for what a return to a nightmare world of murderous dreams and razor gloves can entail. But looking back at the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, the history of horror more generally, and the unfulfilled potential of Freddy Krueger indicates a few directions that team over at Paramount Primal may head in.

New Nightmare Sequel

Many forget that, before Scream, Wes Craven uprooted the slasher genre with a clever, meta-take on horror movies. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare did not get the attention it deserved when it was released and still holds the unfortunate record as the lowest-grossing film in the series. However, it is now regarded as one of the best Nightmare movies.

The reverence for New Nightmare, coupled with the diminishing returns of a rapidly declining Scream franchise, mean a meta sequel to New Nightmare could be the perfect way to bring Freddy Krueger into the 2020s.

Such an approach would give Paramount an easy route to bringing Heather Langenkamp back into the fold, perhaps now playing a fictional version of herself attempting to reboot the Nightmare movies. This could lead to ample commentary on the nature of horror reboots, the lack of creativity in Hollywood, and overreliance on IP.

Requel To The 1984 Original

Like the Halloween movies, the Nightmare on Elm Street movies get messy and yield efforts far inferior to the original film as the franchise progresses. Paramount, therefore, may be inclined to wipe the slate clean and take a page out of Blumhouse’s book by rebooting A Nightmare on Elm Street the way David Gordon Green rebooted Halloween.

This ‘requel’ approach would mean the new movie serves as a direct sequel to the 1984 Wes Craven classic, disregarding all the sequels that followed it. This controversially would eliminate Dream Warriors from continuity, but it would also allow a new filmmaker to tap into what made the original film so effective in the first place, unburdened by the wacky concepts and chronology that hinder later movies.

Going in the requel direction would also ensure that Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson can play a role, immediately giving the new film a leg up in the eyes of nostalgia-hungry Elm Street fanatics. Nancy could even serve as the John Saxon character in the film why her children, or perhaps teens who now occupy her old family home, become Freddy’s latest fixation.

The Springwood Prequel

Robert Englund himself suggested A Nightmare on Elm Street prequel that could shape up to be quite the entry in the long-running franchise.

A Springwood Slasher prequel could skip the traditional teens-vs.-Freddy setup in favor of a focus on Freddy’s human years, prior to any supernatural involvement. The story would take place in the 1970s and follow a young, twisted janitor named Fred Krueger as he begins to commit the first of many sinister crimes against children.

The conclusion could feature the angry parents of Springwood hunting Krueger down and cornering him in the boiler room, leading seamlessly into the 1984 classic.

Full Horror Freddy

One of the (many) missteps that Nightmare on Elm Street sequels made was leaning far too heavily into the humorous side of Freddy Krueger. While dark charisma and morbid humor have always been fixtures of the twisted slasher, they remain secondary to his more sadistic, scarier side in the very best Elm Street movies.

Therefore, Paramount may wish to strip away the campy one-liners and hone in more exclusively on the psychological dread and relentless, inescapable torment of Freddy Krueger in a new Elm Street movie. Doing so could allow the filmmakers to explore the malicious, calculated predator that Freddy truly is and lean into the disturbing reality of a slasher who specifically targets victims during their most vulnerable, private moments.

Tonally going in a different direction with Freddy would also make a recasting of the character more easily digestible for fans. Robert Englund is so synonymous with the role, but it is unclear what a return for him to the franchise would look like. By doing away with the humor and going all in with the horror, the filmmakers would quickly establish that this is a new, fresh take on Freddy, independent of Englund and the preceding franchise.

Freddy Animated Movie

This last theory is admittedly a bit out there, but it certainly broadens the scope of what A Nightmare on Elm Street movie could entail.

Recent years have seen franchises like Predator and Spider-Man pivot to animation with incredible success and set the precedent for other franchises to follow suit. Freddy’s dreamscape seems tailor-made for an animated movie that could reach new heights of creativity for the franchise given the doors that animation opens.

An animated Freddy movie would also more easily allow Robert Englund to reprise his role as Freddy Krueger. At nearly 80-years-old, Englund may not be up for the physical demands, including extensive make-up work, of playing Freddy in live-action again. However, voicing Freddy in an animated film would provide connective tissue to the Freddy that fans adore, while subverting issues with recasting.