Nightmare on Elm Street News
Tuesday, July 28th, 2009
If you missed this year’s Comic-Con (like I did), and you love Freddy Krueger (like I do), then I’ve got some bad news for you. Producer Brad Fuller is saying that the Nightmare on Elm Street footage screened for Comic-Con attendees will not be released online (or anywhere else for that matter…) any time soon.
The reason for this snubbing? The film’s release date is 9 months away and Warner Bros. thinks showing everyone the teaser now will have made interest in the film peak too early. I suppose, in some old fashioned way of thinking, this makes sense. Twenty years ago, I’d have agreed wholeheartedly. The world of movies is different today though–we’re inundated with stuff about movies from the time they start shooting until the time they hit theater screens. Between official sites, blogs, entertainment shows, and all this other new media, a movie can start the hype machine rolling much earlier (and keep it rolling much longer) than ever before.
Plus, this news begs the question “if you’re worried about that, why show it in front of all those people at Comic-Con in the first place?” Comic-Con’s a big deal now–if you’re done with the film to the point where you can show footage, then you might as well go whole hog and show it to everyone. It is, at the very least, another puzzling business decision from a studio.
In other news, STYD has learned that the reason Nightmare on Elm Street has been pushed back two weeks (from April 16th to April 30th) is because the weekend of the 30th is currently wide open as far as new releases go. There’s nothing other than Freddy opening that weekend as of today. That could (and probably will) change between now and then, but there’s an opportunity to open against less competition. It’s also right on the verge of being May–which is when the bigger summer films start invading multiplexes.
So, what have we learned from all of this? Warner Bros. is batting .500 on the business decisions concerning this film. Not airing the Comic-Con footage is boneheaded (it’s a feature length film–they could cut another teaser trailer a few months down the road and get the hype back to fever pitch again quite easily), but moving the release date actually seems shrewd.





