Heather Langenkamp would ‘love’ one last ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ fight with Freddy Krueger

Starting this weekend, Laurie Strode is squaring off against Michael Myers one final time as Halloween Ends hits theaters (and Peacock), capping a modern-day revival of the smash horror franchise that first began with 2018’s comeback slasher Halloween.

So-called “legacy” sequels like David Gordon Green’s Halloween trilogy are having a killer moment in horror and beyond, as longtime fans relish reconnecting with old-school stars (like Jamie Lee Curtis as Strode). But as Curtis and fellow horror queens Neve Campbell and Courtney Cox have helped bring classics like Halloween and Scream back for one final-girl fling, there's a wayback horror series that remains conspicuously absent from the present-day studio race to mine fans' nostalgia for the terrifying past.

Yep, we’re talking about A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Wes Craven-created string of slashers that propelled Heather Langenkamp (as hero Nancy Thompson) to household-name status right alongside Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) for a hot minute back in the 1980s. Like Hellraiser’s Pinhead and Myers himself, Freddy carved out a permanent spot in the all-time pantheon of scary movie menaces as fans feasted on an almost-yearly string of six Nightmare movies between 1984 (when the original A Nightmare on Elm Street debuted) and 1991 (Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare).

Appearing as the hero of the first Elm Street movie before dying in 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson served as the early series’ definitive hero, navigating both the waking and dream worlds through Freddy’s murderous reign of terror. Thanks to her recent starring turn in Mike Flanagan’s new Netflix series The Midnight Club, Langenkamp is once again back in the horror spotlight, giving Entertainment Tonight the perfect opportunity to ask her thoughts on whether A Nightmare on Elm Street is ripe for the legacy sequel treatment.

Would Langenkamp be up to reprise Nancy for one last demented trip into Freddy’s world? Absolutely, she said: “If I could fight Freddy one last time, I’d really like that,” she told ET.

“Gosh, I’d love to see a future in that,” she added. “I mean, I’ve been really watching the Halloween sagas spin out, and I love watching Jamie Lee Curtis get to play that part. This age, where I think we have so much to give to those storylines — I wish I was in control of that. But unfortunately, it’s one of those Hollywood, very complicated things.”

Even though Nancy died (and therefore exited the series) in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, supernatural horror’s not exactly a genre that quibbles over plot devices when it comes to pulling dead characters back from the grave. And hey, if it works for Laurie Strode in Halloween, it’s tough to argue that it couldn’t work for Nancy Thompson — especially since her horror résumé already includes treading that fine line between two freaky versions of reality.

Even with no legacy sequel on the near horizon for A Nightmare on Elm Street, fans can still find Langenkamp staying close to her horror roots. Catch Langenkamp as Dr. Georgina Stanton in The Midnight Club at Netflix, while we anxiously await Jamie Lee Curtis’ last dance with danger when Halloween Ends slashes up theaters and streaming on Peacock beginning Oct. 14.