Nightmare on Elm Street reboot has new candidate to play Freddy Krueger
A Hollywood actor has made it clear he’d be more than happy to play Freddy Krueger in a reboot of the popular horror movie franchise Nightmare on Elm Street.
The role of the creepy, metal clawed killer was originally played by Robert Englund, who played the character in eight movies and a TV series, as well as making a bunch of cameo appearances - including in a Halloween episode of The Simpsons.
However, the 76-year-old actor has previously counted himself out of reprising the role.
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Speaking last year, he shared: “I’m too old and thick to play Freddy now.
"I just can’t do fight scenes for more than one take anymore, I’ve got a bad neck and bad back and arthritis in my right wrist. So I have to hang it up, but I would love to cameo.”
For what it’s worth, Englund said he would be keen for Kevin Bacon to take on the role, revealing: “I know he respects the genre, and he’s such a fine physical actor.
“I think that in the silences and in the way Kevin moves — it would be interesting.”
Bacon was asked for his thoughts on the idea and gave a fairly non-committal response, but refused to rule it out.
"Never say never," Bacon said. "I mean, I say, 'Never say never,' but I really do follow that. There's very few things that I go, 'Nah, nah.' You just never know."
Freddy was most recently played by Jackie Earle Haley, in the critically panned 2010 remake A Nightmare on Elm Street - but it’s not clear if the star would be interested in playing the character again.
However, Fast and Furious star Sung Kang has made it pretty clear that he’d be happy to be in the running to down the striped jumper and fedora, if the opportunity presents itself.
In an interview with Collider, he explained that he grew up with 80s flicks such as An American Werewolf in London, Gremlins, and Nightmare on Elm Street and that they had helped him to appreciate movies.
He went on to praise the ‘practical elements’ of the movies, such as ‘the prosthetics and the artwork’.
This led Kang nicely onto saying that he’d jump at the chance to don the prosthetics himself to play Freddy.
He shared: “I’d love to play Freddy Krueger in A Nightmare on Elm Street. That character was just so fun.
"Having experience with prosthetic makeup and sitting in the chair for four hours like I did in the Obi-Wan series in Star Wars, that's the only part that I kind of wonder if I have the stamina to sit in the makeup chair for months.
"But that character was so fun! That sweater, to this day, is so iconic, and the knife fingers. That'd be on the bucket list, for sure.”
Topics: TV and Film
Claire Reid