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Vale: Wes Craven

Prolific horror master, best known for A Nightmare on Elm Street & Scream, has died.

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Prolific horror master Wes Craven, best known for movies including A Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream, has died, aged 76.

The Hollywood director died at home in Los Angeles.

Known for creating the iconic Freddy Krueger character and Scream‘s Ghostface, Craven directed, wrote and produced features, directed for television and wrote novels.

He wrote and directed A Nightmare on Elm Street featuring Johnny Depp in 1984. The popularity of the film established his reputation as a director of teen-slashers, able to blend gore with wry humour and create memorable film villains.

In the 1990s he pioneered the horror movie with film-within-a-film Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, then followed with Scream in 1996 starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette. The film sparked three more instalments and inspired the Scary Movie parody franchise.

Scream has now also launched as a television series for MTV.

He had recently signed an overall television deal with Universal Cable Productions and television projects in development including The People Under the Stairs with Syfy Networks, Disciples with UCP, We Are All Completely Fine with Syfy/UCP, and Sleepers with Federation Entertainment. He had recently written and was to direct the Thou Shalt Not Kill segment for the Weinstein Company/WGN’s Ten Commandments television miniseries.

Craven also wrote and directed on the TV series Nightmare Cafe and The Twilight Zone.

There were occasional detours from horror including The Music of the Heart starring Meryl Streep and a 1989 sitcom called The People Next Door.

His most recent films were 2010’s My Soul to Take and Scream 4 in 2011.

Source: Variety, The Guardian

2 Responses

  1. he and Scream is what got me into horror movies. saw it when I was in high school and with all the horror movie references it got me to check out others. tragic, the worst news to wake up to today. would have loved to see a Scream 5 made. and of course Freddy and Ghostface are so iconic thanks to him, he’ll be missed! many great directors passing in recent time: John Hughes, Harold Ramis and now Wes. RIP

  2. So devastated by this news. As a horror movie fan, he was my favourite director. My heart goes out to his family and friends. Thank you for five decades of scaring the you-know-what out of us. RIP.

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