'Nightmare on Elm Street 3' director feels Jim Carrey could play killer Freddy Krueger

Los Angeles, Oct 23 (IANS) ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’ director Chuck Russell has said that although Robert Englund “is the only Freddy” to him, he feels that Jim Carrey could pull off playing the killer after directing him in 1994 film “The Mask”.

“Jim, in my opinion, could almost do anything if he put his heart into it,” Russell said on Dread Central’s Development Hell podcast, reports deadline.com.

He added: “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.”

In 2023, Englund said he’s “too old and thick to play Freddy now” after originating the role in the first 1984 slasher installment, adding: “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 do a cameo.”

The actor told Variety at the time that he thought Kevin Bacon “would be interesting” as Freddy, saying, “I know he respects the genre, and he’s such a fine physical actor.”

After Englund’s last turn as the burned boogeyman in Freddy vs. Jason in 2003, Jackie Earle Haley took over the role in director Samuel Bayer’s 2010 remake of Wes Craven‘s original film.

Russell said he’d “love to do another Elm Street if there was the full support of everybody,” adding that Patricia Arquette, who starred as Kristen Parker in his sequel, “has said she’d like to do it again in the press.”

The story of ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors’, which was released in 1987, was developed by Wes Craven and Bruce Wagner.

It is the third installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise and stars Heather Langenkamp, Patricia Arquette, Larry Fishburne, Priscilla Pointer, Craig Wasson, and Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger.

The story follows Nancy Thompson, now a psychiatrist, and Kristen Parker, a patient who can bring others into her own dreams, team up with other kids to launch a daring rescue into the dreamland and save a child from Freddy Krueger.

--IANS

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