Elm Street Has Its New Freddy… Rorschach!
You read it right folks, Watchmen’s Jackie Earle Haley has been cast as the iconic Freddy Krueger in the next big remake, A Nightmare on Elm St.
This casting seems bittersweet to me. On one hand, why on earth would you need to remake the original film? On the other hand, aside from Robert Englund, the absolute embodiment of the Freddy character, Jackie Earle Haley is a damn close to perfect actor to take over the knifed glove, fedora and dingy sweater.
Is this a good move for Jackie though? Jackie is slowly creeping up to becoming a hot-ticket in Hollywood these days, with a best supporting Oscar nomination for Little Children and this year’s Ledger-esque performance as Rorschach in Watchmen. Could this be Haley’s last great role, a pit that sucks him in to countless sequel after sequel? I certainly hope not. Either way I have no doubt in Haley’s ability to do this indelible character justice while giving it a new soul of its own at the same time.
Platinum Dunes, the production company co-owned by Michael Bay, is behind this reboot, telling the sickly funny and frightening tale of Freddy Krueger, a long-thought-dead child molester/murderer who returns in the dreams of the children from the parents that took the law into their own hands and burned him alive. This is one of the many horror-remakes from Platinum Dunes, which has included The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, The Unborn and this year’s Friday the 13th. Yeah, I know, not a great track record…
A Nightmare on Elm St. starts shooting at the end of this month and is slated for release on April 16th, 2010.
2 Comments
This should be interesting as Haley is a good actor. If the script to Elm is lackluster like Friday the 13th (2009), it will not matter though.
The only real good horror remake that I have seen to date was The Amnityville Horror, I loved that one, though scared my wife shitless, so we will sadly never own it.
Moving on though, I really don’t see why remaking FTT is a necsesity, further more reacsting Freddy, in my mind Freddy will always be Robert Englund, i can’t see anyone else really making it their own the way he made Freddy his own. I believe this will end up blowing up in the studios face.