'Nightmare on Elm Street' returns

"Michael was very passionate about Sam," Emmerich says. "When Michael and David Fincher came up as commercials directors, Sam was the other top young guy in the field -- they were the three real hotshots of their era." Even though Bayer has never managed to launch a film career, being involved with a number of projects that never got off the ground, Bay believed that he had the ability to capture the kind of seductive and unsettling imagery that would make "Nightmare" feel like a fresh, visually arresting moviegoing experience.

Haley's appeal

Initially, New Line had planned to hire a true unknown to assume the mantel of Freddy. But Emmerich was especially impressed by Haley's spooky performance in Todd Field's "Little Children," an art film that New Line released in 2006. "I was watching especially closely," Emmerich says with a grin, "since some of his best scenes in the movie were opposite my brother, Noah. Freddy is this incredible stew of malevolence and anger, but he also has a hint of vulnerability, and Jackie really has all of that and more. He just seemed completely right for the part."

The horror movie field has been especially crowded -- you might say overcrowded -- in recent years, with a host of films grabbing an increasingly smaller chunk of the box office returns. With so much scary-movie clutter, is it possible that New Line might be coming too late to the party? Emmerich didn't dodge the issue.

"If we make a good movie and it fails, that will be the reason why -- the marketplace was just too crowded," he acknowledged.

"But we think Freddy is the Coca-Cola of the horror market. There's always a lot of soda pop and vitamin water out there, but there's always room for Coke. You could say that when it comes to scaring people, Freddy is a pretty beloved brand."

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patrick.goldstein@latimes.com