‘The Mask’ Director Chuck Russell Thinks Jim Carrey Could Be An Excellent Freddy Krueger
In the varied career of filmmaker Chuck Russell, two movies he directed immediately stand out – A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and The Mask. Both New Line films did wonders for solidifying the Elm Street series and Jim Carrey as box office juggernauts.
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30-plus years on, Carrey is still putting butts in seats with his antics, while the infamous avenue, dream-stalked by Freddy Krueger, has gone quiet. However, Russell suggests there could be a way of reviving the dormant franchise that involves a co-mingling of sorts, if he ever got to return to the Nightmare world.
First, he’d want to rule out a comeback for Robert Englund. “I’d love to do another Elm Street if there was the full support of everybody,” he began during an edition of Dread Central’s Development Hell podcast.
“Patricia Arquette has said she’d like to do it again in the press. Very interesting, because she didn’t talk about it a lot earlier in her career. She was so terrific and went on to have such a great career – I think that’s a good idea too. I still think Robert, for me, is the only Freddy. Were I to be involved in a new Elm Street, A, I’d be delighted, and B, my first goal would be to get Robert involved,” Russell continued via Dread Central.
If he can’t, then it’s onto Englund’s unofficial understudy — Mr. Ipkiss himself, Jim Carrey. “Yeah, that would be great. Jim, in my opinion, could almost do anything if he put his heart into it,” said Russell. Still, he believes the material needs to take the kind of twist Nightmare creator Wes Craven would appreciate, as the late horror auteur pulled it off in his last crack at Freddy.
“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,“ Russell added.
In New Nightmare, Freddy entered the real world to victimize his creators, with a sadistic focus on Heather Langenkamp and her young son (Miko Hughes). He was less quippy and more of a dream demon like the first installment and the 2010 remake.
For Carrey to put his all into the part for something like that, he has to tap into his dramatic Method chops and tone down his tomfoolery. It could work, but audiences might balk the same way they did at Jackie Earle Haley. The first Mask (and only the first one) is the perfect template for what Carrey’s Freddy could be, which is interesting.
Originally, the film, which was based on a bloody and grim Dark Horse comic, was pitched as a horror film with franchise potential that would’ve given New Line a character to refurbish The House That Freddy Built for the 90s.
