Watchmen's Haley set to play Freddy Krueger

Jackie Earl Haley has had one of the weirdest careers in Hollywood. He began as a runtish, intense teen star in the '70s with memorable turns in movies like Breaking Away and the original Bad News Bears, but then his star dimmed in the early '90s and he left Hollywood to spend a few years delivering pizzas, driving limos and doing other odd jobs to get by before he began a modestly successful new career directing commercials. Then director Steve Zaillian called him out of the blue, offering a role in 2006's All The King's Men, which led to Haley's Oscar-nominated performance in 2007's Little Children and a performance as Watchmen's Rorschach that was widely hailed as the best part of the film.

Well, now Haley's life has taken another strange turn, as the BBC reports he's set to take on the role of iconic movie horror villain Freddy Krueger in a remake of Wes Craven's 1984 horror picture A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Music video director Samuel Bayer will helm the film.

"Looking at his performance in Watchmen, here's a guy playing a character under a mask yet you feel tremendous empathy for him," said Bayer. "And in Nightmare he is going to be under prosthetic make-up.

"You have to feel something for the character. The greatest villains are multi-dimensional and I think he will bring that to the character."

Frankly we weren't that enthused about a Nightmare remake until now, but Haley's involvement makes things a lot more interesting.