The Hollywood Reporter has word that iconic horror director Wes Craven has died after a long battle with brain cancer. He was 76.

A master of horror films and perhaps the great pioneer of the slasher genre, Craven started his career in the D.I.Y. fashion of many of his 1970s contemporaries. He wrote, edited and directed early features like The Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes before making his way into the Hollywood system with projects like his 1982 adaptation of DC Comics Swamp Thing.

But it was 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street that rocketed him to box office fame. The film and its iconic villain Freddy Krueger were inspired by Craven's own childhood and led to scores of sequel's, only a few of which (like the meta Wes Craven's New Nightmare) involved him in a creative capacity.

Craven reinvented his own style by directing the tongue-in-cheek Scream in 1996 which he followed with three sequels -- the last of which arrived in 2011 as his final feature. At the time of his death, he was producing a number of projects including the new MTV Scream series.