Nightmare on Elm Street: Patricia Arquette Reveals Requirement for Franchise Return (Exclusive)

With Jamie Lee Curtis returning to the Halloween franchise and Courtney Cox and Neve Campbell signing on for the next Scream film, is Patricia Arquette the next final girl we’ll see return to our screens? Arquette played the lead protagonist 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and fans have always been eager to see her return. In the film, her character Kristen Parker quickly became one of Freddy Krueger’s targets thanks to her parents being among the group that exacted vigilante justice on him and set ablaze. When she is sent off to a psychiatric hospital by her parents for apparent “attention seeking,” she meets a group of other teenagers just like her who possess secret abilities found only in their dreams.

For Kristen, she’s able to pull people in and out of dreams and acts like a professional gymnast, able to use aerial attacks on the killer. Kristen returned for the next film, Dream Master, but the character was no longer portrayed by Arquette. She was unceremoniously killed off by Freddy in that film after being thrown into a furnace, but she was able to pass her powers onto Alice Johnson.

[RELATED: A Nightmare on Elm Street Stars Reflect on Franchise’s Legacy and Possible Future]

In an interview with ComicBook while promoting the next season of Apple TV+’s Severance, Arquette addressed if she’d ever make a franchise return to A Nightmare on Elm Street, revealing a specific requirement to consider it.

“Ya know, I just, I never really thought that in my dreams I’d be a gymnast so I don’t know,” Arquette joked. “Can I change my superpower? Maybe I’ll come back if I can change my superpower but I mean, I don’t know. I can be invisible; I can be anti-gravitational. I can do all kinds of things. Why do I have to do gymnastics? I like gymnastics don’t get me wrong but I’d like something a little more lethal when I’m dealing with him.”

The horror character created by Wes Craven remains one of the most iconic over three decades later. Across five films the franchise from New Line Cinema has earned over $200 million at the box office. In 2003 they released a crossover film between Freddy and Friday the 13th‘s Jason Vorhees, pitting them against one another, which grossed over $80 million.

Then, in 2010, there was an attempt at reviving the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise with Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Katie Cassidy, and Rooney Mara. While many thought it showed promise others slammed it for being a cash grab and doing nothing to reinvent the wheel. Despite its harsh critics, it grossed over $60 million. A Nightmare on Elm Street has remained dormant since then, but the interest in a new movie from a number of creatives is still talked about to this day.