A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2 director Jack Sholder has been working on a 4K remaster (2025)

April 4th 2025, 1:44pm

Last year, Warner Bros. / New Line Cinema celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Wes Craven-directed classic A Nightmare on Elm Street by giving the film a 4K UHD release. There have been rumblings that they’re planning to follow up that release with a Nightmare on Elm Street franchise 4K UHD box set sometime this year – and while such a set hasn’t been officially announced, there are promising signs that it’s actually happening. Six months ago, Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare director Rachel Talalay revealed on social media that she had been working on “regrading” that film. Now, A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge director Jack Sholder has confirmed that he’s working on a 4K remaster of his movie as well!

Sholder wrote on Facebook, “I just spent last week on the Warners lot working on the restoration of Nightmare on Elm Street 2. The remastered 4K picture off the original 35mm negative looks fantastic, and I was able to make adjustments and corrections only possible thanks to the incredible digital tools now available. The original mono mix from 42 years ago(!) was brought into Dolby Atmos and blew me out of my seat. I heard things in Chris Young’s score I never knew were there and that, combined with some added sound fx work, really lift the film into another dimension. We were careful not to change the look and feel of the film, but even the rather lame scene with the exploding parakeet felt like The Birds. The whole experience was like someone restoring an old Renaissance painting and finally seeing the amazing blue that the painter had used, or the cat now seen hiding behind the table, although in this case, those colors and sounds had never fully been seen before but were implicit in the material and now are explicit. Warners also shot some interviews for the new release and I got to see my old buddy Robert Englund whose performance now jumps off the screen. Keep an eye out for announcements of the release from WB. The new version really needs to be experienced by new fans and re-experienced by old ones.“

Talalay previously said this about working on Freddy’s Dead: “Regrading a movie from 30 years ago is an exercise in being punched in the face by every rookie mistake – with the rare, occasional ‘That was good.’ New 3D is a revelation, though.“

Are you glad to hear that remasters of Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare and A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 2: Freddy’s Revenge (and, we hope, the other sequels) are in the works? Would you like to add a 4K A Nightmare on Elm Street box set to your collection? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Source: Jack Sholder

Tags: A Nightmare on Elm Street, A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, aith, Arrow in the head, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Jack Sholder, Rachel Talalay, Robert Englund, Wes Craven

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Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.