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Old Freddy Endorses New Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street Remake

Posted 06.30.09 by Ryan

With almost every horror movie franchise being remade recently — Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few — Nightmare on Elm Street wasn't far behind. Robert Englund has been the only actor to appear in the series as Freddy, the dream-wandering psycho killer until Jackie Earle Haley was cast for the remake. In an interview with FearNet, however, Englund seems perfectly content to not be involved with the new Elm Street and sounds pretty excited about what director Samuel Bayer has in mind:

I really am looking forward to how they exploit the dreamscape with CGI and all of the new technologies that they have at their fingertips. That is something I think that is appropriate and that's what I'm looking forward to. My feeling is that [producer] Michael Bay — this guy has more money than God — would not put his name on this if he didn't have some real love for the franchise. He wants to reboot it and reimagine it, and I hope he wants to reimagine it and make it different.

Englund seems pleased with Haley wearing the knife glove this time around and is very taken with Haley's interpretation of the character;

I love Jackie's character. Jackie is not big, and I think that Jackie's size is gonna really work for him as Freddy Krueger. Because I've always in my mindset imagined… One of the metaphors or one of the images I've used for Freddy is a little rabid dog that just bites your ankle and holds on. A little yelping dog. And I think Jackie brings that, with his own physicality, to the role, without ever having to work it a little bit. He doesn't really have to work that. He brings that naturally with who he is, which I think is really part of the way I see it.

Englund hope Haley will be allowed to make changes as well:

I'd even like to see Jackie dressed a little differently. Jackie's a wonderful young actor. Let him make it his own. I always used to think of alternates to what I wore in that and I would say, after wearing that sweater for eight movies and a television series, "Maybe he would wear overalls, because he's a janitor." Maybe the hat could be different; maybe it could be a baseball hat or an old frayed baseball hat or something. Maybe the sweater is a vest or maybe it's an old thermal undershirt, those colors or something like that. I mean you've got to keep some of the mythology there. Obviously he's got to be burned and everything. But I sort of hope they avoid my silhouette, and I hope they alter the glove a little bit, rough it up a little bit or make it more [David] Cronenberg or something. I don't know. I just want them to liberate themselves.

Remakes can often not live up to the original, and Englund is sensitive to that fact, but doesn't want that held against the Elm Street remake:

The remakes are tricky. But it's something Hollywood's been doing since the 1920s. I mean they've remade A Star is Born six times. I'm in one of them for God's sake!