Director Samuel Bayer, actor Jackie Earle Haley along with producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller spoke with a small room of journalists at San Diego Comic Con about Platinum Dunes A Nightmare on Elm Street remake and some of their comments and answers to our questions might just surprise you.

So Jackie, how does it feel to wear the sweater and hat?

Jackie Earle Haley: Uh, it feels, uh, warm and shady (laughs). It was incredibly motivating, you know just throwing on the iconic outfit was uh, well it was surreal is what it was.  I mean just standing there wearing that getup. It’s just a trip and then you add in the makeup on top of the wardrobe and uh, it was surreal, it’s a trip to be looking in the mirror at Freddy.

Why was it important to keep the sweater in the update?

Jackie Earle Haley: You know, I think that just like any kind of iconic figure, there’s certain symbols that make them who they are.  I couldn’t imagine them making this movie without the hat, sweater, and the glove.

Why was there a strong desire to revisit this, what is considered (by many) to be an iconic classic horror film?

Andrew Form:  Well I think for us, the concept of this movie was one of the strongest we had ever heard, I mean, you fall asleep, you die. I scared the hell out of us (Brad and I) when we were kids, and we talked to Michael (Bay) about it, and it was a movie that we pursued for a long time. You know, Nightmare was a movie that we always talked about, and when Newline gave us the opportunity, we jumped on it.  But to go back, I mean the concept of the film is brilliant, just gotta stay awake, and if you fall asleep, there’s this guy, that can kill you in your dreams.  And that concept alone, was, you know, nuts for us.

Jackie, playing this character, this iconic character that’s been around for years, is there maybe anything specific you wanted to bring to this character to make it a little more unique?

Jackie Earle Haley: Yeah I thought it would be really interesting to give him a Scottish accent, not sure why, think it works though (laughs). Um, you know I think it’s definitely a scary process trying to step into the shoes of Robert England who has owned this character for decades. He’s done a brilliant job with it.  His embodiment, his performance is what makes Freddy who he is.  So the challenge now is going back in time and paying homage to this first movie, and you know, rebooting it, it was kind of important again to kind of have these qualities that you’re familiar with, like the sweater and the hat and the glove, things that we know. But yet also to try to find a freshness and a newness to this re-envisioning, and I think the makeup of the Andrew Clement design, it’s incredible, and I think where Sam (Bayer) and I were coming with it is darker, more serious, less joky, hopefully scary, more intense.

I always liked the funny Freddy that got some shit, so I mean is there no room for some dark humor?

Jackie Earle Haley: Me too! I think there’s some of that in there; I mean this is probably a better question for Sam

Samuel Bayer: It’s so open to interpretation, you know what you find funny, some people may not, I think there’s a macabre quality to the character anyway, but if you’re looking for just an imitation of what the other actor did, or what they did in the other movies, then I think you’ll be disappointed. I don’t think it’s a funny movie, I don’t personally think that if the character is wise cracking and killing you at the same time that it’s very funny, I think that, I find, I’m taking this very seriously, and you know I’ve said this many times, I said it in the big room,  I really do look at a movie like The Dark Night as an inspiration for this, which is, I don’t think people dress up in outfits, and fly through the sky, and have cars, and dress up as bats, but Christopher Nolan made me believe it.  And what I’m trying to do with this, I’d like people to almost believe that this could be real.

In going dark like that, I mean is [Freddy] a real child molester?

Samuel Bayer:  You know you’re going to have to see the movie, there are some plot points that I don’t want to give away, but you’ll see.

Do you deal with violence in a very different way than violence was explored in the first movie? How graphic do you go?

Samuel Bayer:  A little bit. I think the scariest stuff is when you believe in your characters, so I think we put a lot of emphasis on developing our characters, our kids and what Jackie did with Freddy. I think you’ll see it’s multi dimensional. But, there’s a lot of scare in our movie, and when blood happens, it’s bloody. We don’t want to depend on blood and gore to scare you; it’s the dreams that make it really scary.

It was always a very imaginative series, where do you go with the imaginative nature of the dreams?

Samuel Bayer:  I mean our dreams are pretty imaginative. To be perfectly honest I think it’s one of the things that I think dates the original series, it’s like I look at the original series and sometimes I think the films look like they were made in 1988, or whenever they were made.  I think when they go into a dream world, it’s like cloudy and smoky, fog machines, and I think you’ll see a much more sophisticated 21st century take on the dream sequences.  The dream sequences are an integral part of the movie. It’s what separates this from just a maniac running around with a hatchet.  Not only the characters, but the dreams are really thought out and very intricate and sometimes they’re very beautiful, you know.  They’re not just scary places; they’re actually rather beautiful to look at.

How big of a role does Nancy play in this film, is she still a main character, or is it more ensemble routines?

Brad Fuller: Nancy plays an important role, I mean she’s there all the way through, in some ways she’s the heart and soul of it, but the movie isn’t like, the movie isn’t an ensemble in the way that you’re talking about it, at the end of the day, two of the characters are who the main focus of who the story is for a good portion of the movie.

Are you free to talk about [the future of] the franchise?

Brad Fuller: Well we never know, we set it up to be the best movie it can, and if we’re lucky enough that they want more, we’re going to give it to them.

I’m curious about your own sleep patterns. A lot of actors I know have very, very intense nightmares, and if you do, did that figure into the process?

Jackie Earle Haley:  I don’t know if that figured into the process, but I do recall this crazy re-occurring dream when I was a teenager, maybe it started younger, and I was literally in the bed that I’m sleeping in, so it seems like I’m awake, but I’m obviously still sleeping, and this big tarantualy looking six foot tall bug thing chases me down the hall and whacks me.  I could just not stop dreaming this thing, and then finally it stopped, it was very unsettling, very scary, and uh just really bizarre.  And then of course there’s the wonderful nightmare of being on stage and the curtain opens, and you haven’t even looked at the script yet.  That’s a fun dream.

Have you talked to Robert at all about your character?

Jackie Earle Haley: No, I haven’t.

Do you plan on it?

Jackie Earle Haley:  No, we were going to hook up at some point in time and I was never able to get in the same city at the same time.  We were going to hook up and have dinner, but um, my manager and my agent for my birthday, have gotten me an original Nightmare on Elm Street poster, so I’m gunna try and hunt down Robert and get him to sign it, I wanna hang it in my office, that’d be really cool.

What was it like to wear the glove?

Jackie Earle Haley: Um, it was pretty cool, it was cool and weird and surreal at the same time.  You know at first, the very first one I put on, didn’t fit at all, you know it’s this process of them making it fit my hand.  But uh, a lot of times, you know, there wouldn’t be a lot of setup time between shots or whatever so I’d just have this thing on, and it’d be stuck there sometimes for an hour, so I was a little worried about poking my eye out, or accidentally you know scratching my makeup, and oh know! Two hour fix on the makeup.  Luckily we never had that.  I also was a little concerned of maybe falling on the thing.  I’m lucky that never happened.

Jackie, in terms of creating the voice for the character, since you did such a wonderful job with Rorschach and it’s so different from how you regularly speak, what can we expect from the voice and how did you come to creating it?

Jackie Earle Haley: You know, it’s this organic process of embodying the character, especially when you throw on the clothes and everything, and working in the mirror, and you start playing around and trying different things, to me it’s not so much just sitting at a table going alright, let me try this voice, let me try this voice, let me try this voice, it’s kind of a matter of months where you’re just driving along and a voice comes out, and a day later you try other things.  It’s this weird process of almost letting your sub-conscious do some of the work and seeing what bubbles up, so you gotta give it the time to do that.

So is it all you?

Jackie Earle Haley:  I think it’s still a work in progress, I think what we heard today is uh; it’s mostly me with some enhancement on like the front half of it.  I think these guys, they’re gonna play around with a bit, and my guess is sometimes it’ll be a little bit closer to me, and sometimes they might pump it up for effect, it’s hard to say.  What does Sam think?

Samuel Bayer: I think it’s been an ongoing process, and Jackie really went pretty deep on set finding the character’s voice, and I think that will be a part of our mix-in sessions on the back end, which, I think add like a supernatural quality to it, an unearthly quality, so you know, it’s a process.  It’s what Jackie said, it’s organic, it’s not gonna be Rorschach it’s gonna be, you got a taste of what it’s gonna be today, but it’s still a work in progress.

What role does your special effects, filming technologies play in this movie, and it sounds like the dream sequences might be filled with that? Are there specific scenes that you’re really excited about?

Samuel Bayer: Well Jackie got to see, you know it’s interesting it’s like I’m a very old school filmmaker, there’s not a lot of computer generated effects in this movie, Jackie got to (could not make out)…one sequence that we did, that we will do, then I think people seem to be pretty blown away by, I got some tricks up my sleeves.  A lot of the stuff is very photographic, and I think you’re not gonna see something in the movie, that is seamless enough that you’re not going to say oh that’s a special effect, and that’s what we’re really going for.

As dark as the film can be Jackie, how much fun did you have with it?

Quite a bit, it took awhile though man, because I really needed to acclimate to the makeup, um, and while I was acclimating the makeup, there was still this incredible process of finding this guy organically, and um, I think I kind of found him by fusing it, like fusing all of this, I’m comfortable this, this wacky acclimation process to the makeup and just kind of giving it to Freddy. It’s a real kick playing such a mythical boogeyman.  Um, it was fun, but it was a challenge, there was a lot of hard arduous to get to the fun. One of the things I discovered, I’ve said this before, all these years, I thought Freddy was the one doing the torturing, but it really looks like he was the one being tortured.  You know, three and a half hours in makeup and then out to set Robert goes you know, so he must have had a heck of a time working on those for all those years.