The news hit like a scream, jolting you out of a peaceful sleep: Paramount Pictures has acquired the rights to do a reboot of the historic slasher franchise A Nightmare on Elm Street. This shouldn’t come as TOO big a shock, of course. The culture of the entertainment business is absolutely OBSESSED with intellectual property – they would much rather take something that was popular at one point and try to resurrect it than put in the work to cultivate anything new. And to be honest, I don’t even object to the reboot in principle. Of all the horror icons of the 1980s, Freddy Krueger is probably my favorite. It was going to be done sooner or later; it’s just a question of whether or not it will be done the right way.

And that brings us to the real difficulty in doing any kind of Nightmare reboot: finding a new Freddy Krueger. The reason that Freddy is my favorite of the icons is that he’s the most unique – a nasty sense of humor, a quick wit and a menacing tone of voice that isn’t present in most of the other slashers of the era. Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees, or Leatherface can be entertaining, but they’re all masked, silent killers. That’s not to say that they don’t have personalities of their own or that some performers aren’t better than others, but because of the nature of what those characters are, it’s far easier to accept a new actor putting on one of those masks than somebody else playing Freddy.

But Robert Englund, the actor that made Freddy who he is, is 79 years old. Although he’s still a working actor – in fact, he’s poised to play a major role in the upcoming sequel to the classic Behind the Mask – he has made it quite clear that he just doesn’t feel capable of the stunt work and long, torturous hours in the makeup chair that playing Freddy requires anymore (although he HAS said he would be willing to return to voice the character should there ever be an animated version of Nightmare). This won’t be the first time that Freddy was recast, of course. In 2010 there was a remake starring Jackie Earle Haley as the “Springwood Slasher.” That movie turned out to be something of a train wreck, though, and although most of the fans will concede that it wasn’t Haley’s performance that was lacking, they would also rather wipe the slate clean rather than be reminded of it.

Why is it so hard to imagine somebody else as Freddy Krueger? Other iconic characters have been recast in the past. In fact, for some characters it’s outright expected. There have been six official James Bond actors, and when one retires nobody questions IF the part should be recast, but only with WHO. The same thing goes for Superman, Batman, and several others. Granted, there are always people who are adamant that “their” version of the character is the only one, but that’s a really narrow minded point of view. It’s fine to say that Christopher Reeve is your favorite Superman – I ain’t here to argue with you – but to say that he’s the only one who should ever be allowed to play the character is absurd. 

On the flipside, Marvel fans love to point out that only one actor has played Wolverine in live-action movies, Hugh Jackman. These fans always forget the necessary caveat with a statement like that: “So far.” 20th Century Fox got extremely lucky with Jackman, casting an actor who had the physicality and personality to make the character work for DECADES, not to mention a willingness to keep returning, even after “retiring” once. But had he decided not to come back at the time that they were planning the soft reboot of X-Men: Days of Future Past, the character would almost certainly have been recast along with Cyclops and Jean Grey. And now that the X-Men are finally joining the MCU, everybody knows it’s only a matter of time before somebody else puts on that pointy mask of his. 

This particular problem, this permanent association of a role with a singular actor, is a product of the film era. On stage, there is no presumption that a character will be forever associated with a single actor, no matter how good they are. I think the reason for that is that every theatrical production is a unique experience, something that cannot be reproduced (barring filmed versions of the stage play, of course). That ethereal quality is one of the things that makes theater magical. Movies, however, feel more permanent. If you go into ten different theaters with live performances of the same play, it will be different every time. If you go into ten theaters showing the same movie, it won’t change. If it were possible to go into a theater and watch the same live performance of a play forever, people might still be adamant in saying that Julie Andrews is the only person who could ever play Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady rather than immediately associating that character with Audrey Hepburn from the film. 

But as so often happens, Eliza Doolittle leads us back to Freddy Krueger. Now that Paramount has announced their intention to move forward with the new film, the question of who should play Freddy has to be asked. And I’m going to say something that may or may not be a hot take – you tell me. If the person suggested is an actor you are aware of without having to look them up, they’re probably the wrong choice for the role. This is a case where we need an actor that can be fully immersed in the character. Putting Tom Holland (to throw out one truly terrible suggestion) in the makeup will not give us Freddy Krueger, it will give us Tom Holland cosplaying as Freddy Krueger. And this isn’t a knock on Holland’s acting abilities, it’s just that he’s too well-known for us to completely lose ourselves in the character.

The best choice for Freddy is probably somebody that nobody reading this has ever heard of before, someone who can embody the character and whom we’ll all accept without the baggage of previous roles or celebrity personality. The cult of celebrity isn’t as powerful as it once was anyway, after all. There are few faces in Hollywood that are guaranteed to open a movie on their own anymore, and those that ARE in that club are highly unlikely to consider the Freddy role. Besides, horror as a genre has never been as obsessed with that as the rest of the industry. That’s not to say that horror fans don’t have their favorite actors – we’ll line up for the likes of Kane Hodder, Jamie Lee Curtis, or Robert Englund himself. But we’re JUST as likely to throw our support behind a movie that has nobody we recognize if the premise, writing, and acting are good enough.

One of the biggest hits of the year was Backrooms, a horror movie based on a creepypasta, of all things. The biggest name in the cast is Chiwetel Ejiofor – a fine actor, and a great addition to any cast, but nobody looking at his filmography would call him a horror icon. The closest thing in the movie to a horror “star” is Mark Duplass of the Creep franchise, but even he’s hardly a household name. 

All of this is to say that while horror fans DO show up for certain names, there are a lot of other reasons they go to the movies too. And in a case like Freddy Krueger, it’s far more important to get somebody who can play the role than it is to get somebody the audience recognizes. What Paramount should do, if they’ve got any sense at all, is cast as wide a net as possible, find the best Freddy out there, and then build the movie around his performance rather than his number of social media follows. 

Do they have that kind of sense? We can only hope so. 

If they do it right, maybe in a couple of years it’ll be hard to get to sleep again. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. He’s also started putting his LitReel videos on TikTok. For more discussion of casting, go into any Dungeon Crawler Carl group on Facebook, ask who they think should play any given character in the upcoming TV show, then hide under a desk.