You don't need to be a genre fan to know that Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street is widely considered one of the best horror movies of all time. Its 2010 remake is, well, not – and it's got the 14% score on Rotten Tomatoes to prove it.
Now, original Freddy Krueger actor Robert Englund has shared his thoughts on the maligned flick, suggesting that it wasn't necessarily bad but rather, "premature". In a new chat, he told Indiewire: "I love a lot of the actors in the movie, so I'm not going to say anything bad about it, I just think the timing was off."
Starring Jackie Early Haley as razor-fingered Freddy and Oscar-nominated Rooney Mara as Nancy, the newer movie followed a similar story: a bunch of teens get terrorized (and offed violently) by an undead child killer. Initially, Platinum Dunes wanted to do the same with it as it had done with its Friday the 13th reboot, where the writers pooled together the highlights of the long-spanning series. Instead, it added certain controversial elements Craven cut out of the 1984 slasher, like Freddy's sex offender past. Despite its negative reviews, it wound up being the highest-grossing film in the franchise, earning $117.7 million at the global box-office.
Elsewhere in the interview, Englund, who appeared as Victor Creel in Stranger Things season 4 not too long ago, suggested that another attempt at rebooting the franchise was inevitable – and went on to share his thoughts on how Hollywood should do it, too.
"I think they can do Part 2 as a standalone and really get into the subtext of Freddy manipulating Jesse [Walsh, Mark Patton's character in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge] and playing with his subconscious. My theory would be, you don't go near Nightmare 1 again. You either do a prequel or start with Dream Warriors, which is the biggest success in the franchise and a fan favorite. So I would do 3, 4, and 5. I'd reboot them. And then, to end the franchise, I would do the prequel."
When asked why he's not revisited the iconic villain in over 22 years, Krueger candidly suggested that it was the franchise's complicated rights that put him off: "There are so many people involved who have a piece of the action. When Wes [Craven] passed away, he left an awful lot of rights to his estate. He has many many rights that he worked out between character titles and names and plot and things like that. New Line Cinema obviously has a big hand in it. Much of that was surrendered to Ted Turner, then went to Warner Bros. So Warner Bros. has a huge piece of it. I know Michael Bay had been involved with some interest and also Blumhouse."
For more, check out our guide to the most exciting upcoming horror movies heading our way.
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