20 Things You Didn’t Know About The Nightmare On Elm Street Franchise
9. Robert Englund Was Almost Recast For The Sequel
Robert Englund is easily the actor most important to the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, yet New Line didn’t realize that at first, and for the sequel, they very nearly recast him.
In pre-production of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, Robert Englund was asking for a pay raise, which the studio obviously didn’t want to give him. They felt that Freddy was a character who could easily be played by anyone, and so they decided to fire Englund and just get a random extra to play Freddy. Yeah, it’s not even like they sent out a casting call for a professional actor to replace him. They just plucked somebody off the set, put him in the Freddy costume, and rolled camera.
After two full weeks of filming, it suddenly struck Robert Shaye that hey, maybe the iconic character of the movie should actually be played by a professional. The new Freddy came across as wooden and uncharismatic in the footage they had, which made sense because the guy wasn’t even an actor.
So Shaye called up Englund, agreed to give him the pay raise he asked for, and the studio immediately rehired him. Considering that fans kept coming back to the sequels entirely for Freddy, that decision to get rid of Englund very nearly sunk the entire franchise.