Welcome to Script to Pieces! A feature where we look at the best, most interesting, and at times most unbelievable horror movies that never happened. Sometimes these will be productions that never came together at all. Sometimes we will discuss original incarnations that were completely different from what we wound up with. Each should be fascinating in its own way, because the stories of movies that never see the light of day are often even more interesting than the stories of those that do. In this installment, we are looking at what would have been Peter Jackson’s A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Lover.
The Rise of Freddy Krueger
Freddy Krueger skyrocketed to mainstream success in the late 1980s. He was an icon. But his success, all things considered, was relatively short-lived. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 struck huge at the box office and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 was even bigger. It was a sensation. This was Freddy the star. Freddy re-branded for the MTV generation. The film was swiftly followed by a weekly TV series.
But people suffered from over-saturation. New Line rushed The Dream Child into theaters too quickly. It wasn’t as good as the other films and fans quickly caught on. The Dream Child didn’t perform at the box office. So Bob Shaye New Line Cinema began to rethink the Elm Street brand.
Peter Jackson Submits His Pitch for A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Lover
New Line began to meet with writers on what they believed would be the ultimate end to Freddy and the franchise. One of those writers was a young New Zealand man named Peter Jackson. He had just directed the virtually no budget features Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles. New Line was impressed with his spirit and his vision. They liked his ideas and so they put him to work on a script.
Jackson’s script, which he co-wrote with Danny Mulheron, was titled A Nightmare on Elm Street 6: The Dream Lover. The plot was interesting in a sort of pre-New Nightmare meta take on the franchise. The idea was that Freddy was no longer being taken seriously, that the people of Springwood just saw him as a joke. That sentiment reflects how many viewers felt at this point in time.
In Jackson’s Clockwork Orange-reminiscent take, the teens of Elm Street would take sleeping pills to go into the dream world and beat up on a weak and defenseless Freddy for kicks. No longer feeding on fear, Freddy was nothing but a helpless old man in the dream world. Neither scary nor threatening.
But at some point, a teen would slip up, and Freddy would gain the upper hand. All it would take is actually killing one of these kids to turn Krueger into a legitimate threat and begin to build fear again.
Freddy would eventually regain enough power to take a police officer hostage in the dream world, keeping him in a comatose state. The main idea is that the officer is the father of one of the main teens who will have to go back into the dreamscape to save his father and defeat Freddy once and for all.
Jackson’s Dream Lover Script Was Good but Wasn’t What New Line Wanted
As is expected from Jackson, the script for Dream Lover is rife with good ideas. It would have given us a tour of the dream world for virtually the first time. The notion of Freddy having to regain power by becoming scary again, showing people he was not a joke, that whole concept is brilliant. I also like the idea of the teenage lead willingly going back into the dream world to face Freddy head-on. That parallels Nancy’s journey in the original film.
Obviously, Jackson’s script is not what we got. New Line passed on Dream Lover, but enjoyed his energy. They remembered that years later when they brought him back in for The Lord of the Rings.
The Freddy’s Dead We Almost Got
At the same time Jackson and Mulheron were writing their script, New Line was developing a screenplay by in-house producer Michael De Luca titled Freddy’s Dead. This is of course the script they went with. But it was initially very different from what wound up on the screen. In the early drafts John Doe is specifically Jacob Johnson, the then-unborn centerpiece of The Dream Child.
The early drafts of Freddy’s Dead also include a concept called the “Dream Police.” The Dream Police are apparent victims who have become stuck in the dreamscape and are trying to keep control of Freddy. It’s an interesting concept. The exciting distinction is that the dream police are better known to fans as the ‘Dream Warriors’. Every single one of them would have been back, at least according to these early drafts. It’s hard to say why any of that was cut.
As it stands, we have a Freddy’s Dead that makes for an interesting movie, but a weird finale. I admittedly have fun with the cartoonish, over-the-top nature of Freddy’s Dead. But there’s no denying the interesting prospect of what could have been.
Updated June 12, 2024
