Given the glut of reboots in development lately, it’s surprising that Hollywood is sleeping on returning to the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and giving us a new Freddy Krueger.
Freddy—the sicko with knives for fingers and a deformed face who can murder people in their dreams—was played to perfection by Robert Englund in the 1984 film and numerous other projects in the franchise.
Englund has said that he’s not interested in playing the role again, but in a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, he thought that the next Freddy should be “someone like a Doug Jones,” who is known for playing Saru on Star Trek: Discovery, Abe Sapien in Hellboy, and Amphibian Man in The Shape of Water. Englund also added that he was down with Kevin Bacon taking on the part (something the actor was rumored to have been considering a few years ago), but conceded that the timing for that had likely passed.
Chuck Russell, who directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, has also talked about new Freddy casting recently. On Dread Central’s Development Hell podcast (via Fortress of Solitude), he said that he couldn’t imagine anyone other than Englund playing the character, though he was open to the idea posited by the host of Jim Carrey taking on the role. “That would be great,” he said. “Jim, in my opinion, could almost do anything if he put his heart into it. For Jim to do it, we’d have to do something that was another leap in the Elm Street series—a little bit like what Wes did with his very meta New Nightmare.”
Who knows who the new Freddy will be? Because, let’s be honest, there will be another Nightmare on Elm Street at some point in the future, even though there was the 2010 film starring Jackie Earle Haley, which wasn’t well received through no fault of Haley’s. Mike Flanagan has said he wants to do a film in the franchise, for one, so odds are good Freddy will be entering our nightmares once again.
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