Wes Craven, director of Scream and Nightmare on Elm Street, dies at 76

Wes Craven, seen here on the set of his 2005 film Red Eye, has died.

Film director Wes Craven, who directed the original A Nightmare on Elm Street and all four of the Scream films, has died of brain cancer, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 76.

Craven gave birth to the iconic horror character Freddy Krueger after reading articles about children who awoke screaming from dreams and died suddenly.

Krueger, played by actor Robert Englund in eight films and on television between 1984 and 2003, was recognisable by his burned face, red-and-green striped sweater, dirty brown fedora and razor claw.

Krueger, a child murderer executed by a neighborhood lynch mob, terrorised the children of his killers in their dreams as a vengeful spirit.

As the series went on, Englund himself took center-stage as the character developed an increasingly cheeky, dark-humored persona.

Craven wrote and directed the first Nightmare, which co-starred a young Johnny Depp, and wrote the third, Dream Warriors. He had no involvement in the series again until 1994's New Nightmare, in which Craven, Englund and original Nightmare star Heather Langenkamp starred as fictitious versions of themselves who are terrorised by Krueger, who has managed to cross over into the real world.

Craven directed Scream in 1996 from a script by Dawson's Creek creator Kevin Williamson. The postmodern film became a totem of self-referential slasher fare in which the characters discuss the "rules" of surviving a horror film - all the while breaking them as they are hacked to bits by a killer wearing a ghost-face mask.

Craven occasionally ventured outside the horror genre. In 1999, he directed Music of the Heart, starring Meryl Streep in an Oscar-nominated performance as a teacher struggling to teach violin to inner-city children in Harlem.

Craven's final film as director was Scream 4 in 2011.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Craven was thrice married and had two children, Jonathan and Jessica, with first wife, Bonnie Broecker. He tied the knot with Iya Labunka in 2004.

Craven's Twitter feed had a picture posted of its subject and his dates around 9.30pm.

The pinned tweet - a feature that lets users put a post permanently at the top of the feed - had this advice from a man with a lengthy career that included periods of "hot" and "not": "Take the 1st job you can in the industry you want to get into. The job doesn't matter, getting your foot in the door does. #MondayMotivation"

Fellow horror filmmaker John Carpenter, director of The Thing, Halloween and others, said in a statement: "My friend Wes has left us too soon. He was truly an Old School director. I had a great time directing him. I'm REALLY gonna miss him."

RIP Wes Craven, may you live on with the force

— Darth Vader (@DepressedDarth) August 31, 2015

Thank you for being the kindest man, the gentlest man, and one of the smartest men I've known. Please say there's a plot twist. #wescraven

— Rose McGowan (@rosemcgowan) August 31, 2015