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

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.

No writer has been assigned.

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 original 1984 Freddy Krueger screenplay heading to Paramount, with the Craven estate obtaining the rights again in 2019 with the help of attorney Marc Toberoff.

The rights deal is unrelated to the pending Paramount-Warner Bros merger, but it’s clear Freddy ultimately will wind up under the same corporate parent, just under different label. The original A Nightmare on Elm Street featured a pre-blockbuster star in Johnny Depp as well as Robert Englund as the knife-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 pumped out from the 1980s into the early 1990s, and were a key genre franchise in addition to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Austin Powers and House Party that made New Line a vibrant studio. The eight films have grossed north of $438 million worldwide (note: New Line sold off foreign on its 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. The franchise has been dormant since then. Apparently, there’s a significant amount of downstream in comic books, merchandise and video games.

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

Lifshitz and Margules produced Weapons, Barbarian, Companion and Friendship under Boulderlight. The duo headed to Paramount from Warner Bros in September 2025 to kick off a genre label. Today, they unveiled the name of that label, with Primal aiming to 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 Craven estate.