"A Nightmare on Elm Street" joins growing list of remakes

Original poster, "A Nightmare on Elm Street

Michael Bay, who produced the remake of Friday the 13th, is at again with A Nightmare on Elm Street, described as “a re-imagining of the horror icon Freddy Krueger.” Samuel Bayer directs from a screenplay by Wesley Strick. Former child star Jackie Earle Haley (The Bad News Bears), who more recently gave an electrifying as Rorshach in Watchmen, takes on the role made famous by Robert Englund.

Bayer, 47, has a background in rock videos and documentaries. Strick, 55, has written the screenplays for True Believer, Arachnophobia, the Martin Scorsese remake of Cape Fear.

The original A Nightmare on Elm Street was written and directed by horror specialist Wes Craven in 1984, on a budget of less than two million dollars. Heather Langenkamp starred, with Ronee Blakely, John Saxon, who had a few earlier been featured in John Carpenter’s original Halloween, Robert Englund and the then-unknown Johnny Depp. Freddy Krueger, a serial child murderer burned alive in his own boiler room by outraged parents when he was released from prison on a technicality. Kruger is now haunting a new generation of teenagers in their dreams, and if he kills them in their dreams, they stay dead. The film featured imaginative visuals, and a number of critics praised it for its blurring of the line between apparent reality and apparent fantasy.

The film was profitable and generated several sequels, which launched the careers of more than one aspiring director, including Renny Harlin (Die Hard 2). Freddy seemed increasingly a comic figure as the sequels progressed, and teenagers actually tended to root for him.

Englund, a classically trained actor, had appeared in supporting roles in several films and the television miniseries V before taking on the role of Freddy Krueger. He has worked fairly steadily since A Nightmare on Elm Street, albeit almost entirely in horror films.

Haley, taking on the iconic role, is hedging his bets. He is also due to be seen in Scorsese’s Shutter Island, based on Dennis Lehane’s novel. Shutter Island was originally due to be released this fall, but was bumped to February of next year for unspecified financial reasons by Paramount.

The cast of the remake also includes Kyle Gallner (The Haunting in Connecticut), Katie Cassidy (Taken, TV’s Supernatural), Rooney Mara (Urban Legend: Bloody Mary), Thomas Dekker (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Clancy Brown (The Shawshank Redemption) and Kellan Lutz (Twilight, The Twilight Saga: New Moon).

A Nightmare on Elm Street is scheduled to be released in April, 2010.