The director of 2026's scariest movie sets his sights on another classic horror franchise

Obsession director Curry Barker already has his next big project lined up. The rising horror filmmaker is rebooting the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise for A24, promising a fresh spin on the long-running slasher series with an emphasis on the cannibal family at the heart of the story. But what comes next? In an interview with Polygon focused on his terrifying new movie Obsession (more on that in another story soon), Barker teased one other iconic horror franchise he wouldn't be taking on. "Obviously, everybody wants to do Nightmare on Elm Street," Barker tells me over Zoom. "It's kind of like the hot thing right now. I don't even know who has the rights to that or what — I hear that the rights are pretty locked tight for that movie, but man, what a concept that has endless potential of nightmares and how trippy and weird and creepy they could get. I would love to take a crack at that." There hasn't been a new Elm Street movie since the 2010 reboot, which got eviscerated by critics but made a killing at the box office. Five years later, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema tried to relaunch the Freddy Krueger franchise yet again, but the project never made it out of development. Then,