[Interview] Mike Flanagan is Dying to Pitch His “Killer Idea” for ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’
Our podcast “The Boo Crew” is back with a new episode, this time with Doctor Sleep director Mike Flanagan and writer/actress Kate Siegel (“The Haunting of Hill House”)!
While the episode is Doctor Sleep-centric, the crew was able to ask Flanagan about two major horror franchises that his name has been connected to, with the first being A Nightmare on Elm Street.
Last week, Bloody Disgusting exclusively told you that Wes Craven’s estate has opened the door to pitches that would resurrect A Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddy Krueger. Flanagan, who often chats with fans on Twitter (he uses IG to post photos of pizza, so give that a follow immediately), quickly raised his hand: “Put me in, coach… I’ve got a pitch!”
“The Boo Crew” asked Flanagan about the tweet, and while he (obviously) couldn’t elaborate, he did tease, “I got a killer idea.”
“Oh, it’s so good,” Siegel adds.
“[I’m] dying to get in there to pitch it,” Flanagan continues. “If I got to do this it would be so cool.”
Yeah, I know, not a lot of meat on the bone there, but fans of Flanagan (that’s me!) are beyond excited about the potential of the filmmaker heading down to Elm Street.
On a somewhat related note, Flanagan was once approached to direct Halloween, which would eventually be helmed by David Gordon Green. If you recall, Bloody Disgusting broke the news, but discussions never got beyond a single phone call that was more-or-less an open invitation.
“Jason Blum called me once and asked me that,” Flanagan reveals. “I tried to come up with a take for a minute when Blumhouse got Halloween.”
When asked what his Halloween would look like, Flanagan would explain.
“The answer to that is, I would do Hush. In a lot of ways, Hush is my Halloween.”
“I found my notes for that very brief period of time when I was trying to come up with a take on Halloween because Jason had said, ‘Hey, if you want to do this we can probably figure something out.’ I’m glad that I didn’t and so glad it did not come to me because the only note that I had scribbled over three days of brainstorming was ‘Dr. Loomis a woman?’ That’s as far as I got on Halloween.”
“They made the right call in not trusting the franchise to me,” he jokes. “In a lot of ways, Hush was my riff on the beautiful, simplicity, silence, tension, suspense that Halloween is. All of my love for Carpenter’s film is poured into that.”
“If Hush didn’t exist, and I was doing Halloween, it would look a lot like Hush.”
You can (and absolutely should) watch Hush on Netflix. As for A Nightmare on Elm Street, let’s all sit back and see how everything unfolds over the next few months.
You can listen to episode #85 of The Boo Crew below!
