Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
A New Nightmare? Chucky Star Devon Sawa Volunteers to Take Over as Freddy Krueger
Robert Englund might not be game for Freddy anymore, but Devon Sawa is...sort of.
Just days ago, in an interview to promote the new documentary about his career, Hollywood Dreams and Nightmares, legendary horror star Robert Englund explained why he's done putting on the glove and the hat to play his signature role, Freddy Krueger.
“I’m too old and thick to play Freddy now,” the actor 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 of course, just because Englund is retiring from the role doesn't mean that Freddy's dead forever. The character was already played by Jackie Earle Haley in the A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot from 2010, and there are already actors lining up to play the beloved slasher villain in whatever the next incarnation of Freddy might be, including one of the stars of SYFY's Chucky.
RELATED: Did You Catch the Idle Hands Easter Egg in Chucky Season 2?
On Tuesday, when the story about Englund retirement from the role started to really make the rounds, Devon Sawa, who's played three different characters on the SYFY hit based on the Child's Play franchise, volunteered to take over for Englund on Twitter.
The state of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise
Now, to be clear, it's not like there's a casting process underway at the moment. There hasn't been a new Nightmare film in more than a decade, the first reboot wasn't exactly all that well-received, and there's no clear picture right now as to what the future of that particularly series, and that particular villain, might look like. Still, Sawa has quite the horror pedigree, with a career stretching back through things like Final Destination, Idle Hands, and recent successes like Hunter Hunter (track it down if you haven't seen it, it's brutal). It's easy to imagine him as a contender.
That said, Sawa later followed up on his post by responding to a fan to clarify that he was just kidding around about taking on the role. However, Sawa also made it clear, when the fan suggested Englund's shadow might be too long for a new face to embody Freddy, that you should never count the actor out.
Chucky returns later this year on SYFY for its third season.
