Robert Englund has revealed that at a time, there was a serious development toward a prequel for Freddy's story called "The First Kills", which would have been centered around two policemen chasing for the Springwood Slasher and two lawyers during the legal proceedings. Englund claims that John McNaughton was considered for directing the prequel, but these plans were forgotten after New Line Cinema was merged with Turner Broadcasting System in 1994. McNaughton came back later around the millennium shift and hoped to produce an alternative prequel story, alongside with scriptwriter R.J. Tsarov, which would have been set in Hell, where McNaughton imagined Freddy to have been stuck in between his lynching and the events of the 1984 film. New Line Cinema rejected this idea due to the film "Little Nicky" (2000) having been partially set in Hell while also being a box-office bomb, deterring the company from producing another film set in Hell at that time.