Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors is one of the best-loved sequels in the franchise, but everyone involved in the series had a shot at pitching their own vision - and each one is exceptionally weird and interesting. Arriving in theatres in 1984, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare On Elm Street was a sleeper hit upon release. The fantasy horror marked a significant departure from the standard slasher formula, and its memorable monster Freddy Krueger made the director famous.

Craven had already had some success with earlier efforts like survival horror The Hills Have Eyes or The Last House On The Left. However, the success of A Nightmare On Elm Street saw the horror auteur break into the mainstream, with the movie rivaling the acclaim of John Carpenter’s Halloween. The dream demon Freddy Krueger made Craven one of horror’s most in-demand directors, even though the creator himself would not return to the franchise until 1994’s New Nightmare.

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Despite coming up with the original idea for Freddy, Craven was unhappy with the direction the studio wanted to take the character. With each new sequel, the initially terrifying Krueger became more of a comedic antihero who audiences loved for his one-liners. The fear factor waned as the series wore on much to Craven’s chagrin, prompting the director to re-establish the character wholesale with New Nightmare. However, while Renny Harlin’s Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master made Freddy outright comedic, the seeds for this transformation were sown by the quips he voiced in the second sequel, 1987's Dream Warriors. Despite contributing to the character’s gradual comic reinvention, for many fans of the franchise, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 remains the best movie in the series outside of the original. This is less likely down to Freddy’s funny side, and more likely because everyone involved got to take a stab at coming up with wild, fascinating story ideas for the sequel.

Wes Craven’s First Nightmare 3 Pitch (Was New Nightmare)

Wes Craven

A full seven years before New Nightmare’s meta-slasher became a reality, Wes Craven’s original pitch for a second sequel was also based on the premise of Freddy hunting and killing the cast and crew who were making a Nightmare On Elm Street movie. However, the idea was rejected by the franchise’s producers, despite the same year’s cult classic Return to Horror High proving the concept could work. It would be eight years before the conceit was revisited to critical acclaim - but box office disappointment - when Craven returned to the franchise, but that was not the last time the producers would fail to take up a concept Craven pitched them for Nightmare On Elm Street 3.

John Saxon’s Incredible Nightmare 3 Pitch

a nightmare on elm street john saxon

It’s not entirely clear why the cast of Nightmare On Elm Street 3 were given a chance to write a sequel themselves, but it’s just as well they were. Screen veteran John Saxon’s take on the material is phenomenally weird and promising. Entitled How The Nightmare On Elm Street All Began, this rare script was written by the original movie’s actor, who played Nancy’s father Donald. It turns Freddy into an innocent man who was framed for the child murders in his backstory. What is wild is that the murders were committed by none other than the Manson family, with Freddy being an unfortunate child psychologist who is blamed for them. He returns from the grave to wreak revenge on the mob of parents who forced him to “confess” to the murders under duress.

The Nightmare On Elm Street remake also attempted this angle with less success, toying with the idea that Freddy was innocent only to then reveal he was even more twisted than viewers thought. Saxon’s prequel, in contrast, would have made the monster into a tortured antihero, and a victim of a famous real-life criminal. Whether this story was abandoned due to fears of litigation or just because its premise could have alienated viewers is unclear, but it’s a delightfully demented take that anyone remaking the series should revisit.

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Robert Englund’s Wild Nightmare 3 Pitch

Robert Englund as Freddy brandishing knife fingers in A Nightmare on Elm Street

Joining the list of cast members offered a chance to pitch a sequel, Freddy’s performer also drafted a second sequel, with some elements of his version being repurposed for an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares. Robert Englund wrote a draft titled Freddy’s Funhouse, which was less of a litigious nightmare than Saxon’s but incredibly visually ambitious. In the script, the Springwood slasher made 1428 Elm Street his dreamworld abode and filled the house with killer booby traps in an inversion of the original movie’s climax, trapping teens who had sought him out intentionally. This sprawling story would have featured a sister of one of the original’s victims as its heroine and a sleep scientist as its deuteragonist, a twist that brings the series back to its inspiration. Craven created Krueger after reading a series of articles about teenage refugees dying of unknown causes in their sleep and doctors being stumped by the search for a cause.

Wes Craven’s Second, Stranger Nightmare 3 Pitch

After the rejection of what would become New Nightmare, Wes Craven’s later Nightmare On Elm Street 3 pitch saw a group of teens banding together to take on Freddy. However, in his draft, the kids were victims of a darker fate. Excised for being too dark, the original story saw numerous teens traveling to the same location to kill themselves and Nancy discovering they all dreamed of Freddy before dying. Krueger himself was less talkative in this sequel and even more profane, and his dream home was not the Elm Street house but rather a childhood ranch.

Described in Craven’s script as ”an architectural portal to [Freddy's dreamscape]" and a "virtually limitless world of the human psyche in all of its dimensions," the house also posed a problem for the series financiers. Producer (and later Freddy's Dead director) Rachel Talalay called the story a “$20 million script.” As a result, the lighter, less expensive take by Frank Darabont was produced instead, and the critically-acclaimed Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors signaled a shift into more fantastical territory for the franchise’s future.

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