Robert Englund is done slashing teenagers with his razor fingers. Back in 2023, the Nightmare on Elm Street actor said he’s finished playing Freddy Krueger for good. “I’m too old and thick to play Freddy now,” Englund told Variety. “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.”
But film villains never truly die; they simply get replaced with younger actors. Chuck Russell, who co-wrote and directed 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, thinks he’s got just the right guy for the job: Jim Carrey, the man Russell directed in The Mask.
“Jim, in my opinion, could almost do anything if he put his heart into it,” Russell told Dread Central. “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. I think Jim would only consider it, and I’d only consider harnessing Jim, if there was a bold new direction for Elm Street.”
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I’ll suggest that Carrey as Freddy Krueger would qualify as a “bold new direction” in and of itself.
Before Russell puts too much effort into “harnessing Jim,” he should probably remember a couple of key things about Carrey’s career. First, he’s in semi-retirement, although he keeps popping up in the Sonic the Hedgehog movies because, as he’s admitted, he bought a lot of stuff and needs the money.
Second, he swore off violent roles in movies after his turn in Kick-Ass 2 as the gung-ho good-ish guy Captain Stars and Stripes. Carrey rethought his involvement after mass shootings dominated the news in the 2010s and refused to promote the movie.
“I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence,” Carrey posted in 2013 in a since-deleted tweet. “I meant to say my apologies to others involve with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart.”
If threatening cartoon bad guys with guns is too much for Carrey, it’s unlikely he’d want to dismember their bloody remains.
If Carrey isn’t an option, Englund did have another idea for a Kruger replacement: Dastardly Footloose star Keven Bacon. “I know he respects the genre, and he’s such a fine physical actor,” Englund mused. “I think that in the silences and in the way Kevin moves — it would be interesting.”
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