Remake Remake Fucking Remake

[Pozer]

I sent him a message on MySpace earlier this week asking him what the fuck he was doing.

He replied to me today with, "An auteur's gotta eat."

I swear to god this happened.

[Reel]

Your ass better use the money to make something that'll really blow us away next time.

The next thing he's working on is a reboot of Tarzan, so apparently not. I suppose I could get into that story but it's not gonna get me to pay $10 for a seat, like Black Snake Moan did. Or even like disney's Tarzan did when I was little. Who the fuck is going to want to see that movie? He's quickly headed into David Gordon Green territory..

S.R. talked to him about it here

[MacGuffin]

Joseph Gordon-Levitt Developing 'Little Shop of Horrors' as Acting Vehicle (Exclusive)
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the playwright behind Broadway's "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark," is coming on board to write the script.
Source: THR

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is developing with an eye to star in Warner Bros.' remake of Little Shop of Horrors.

Marc Platt, the producer behind Broadway's Wicked and such films as Wanted and Legally Blonde, is producing the redo, to which Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the playwright behind the Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, is coming on board to write the script. There is no director set.

Little Shop originally was a quirky 1960 movie from Roger Corman that featured a milquetoast florist who discovers success with a human-eating plant. It was turned into an off-Broadway musical, which led to a second movie in 1986, directed by Frank Oz and starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin.

If the project comes together in an ideal fashion, Gordon-Levitt would play Seymour, the nerdy florist who is forced to feed the beast in order to keep his fame and popularity rising.

Gordon-Levitt, who has developed a following at Warners after key turns in Inception and this summer's The Dark Knight Rises, is repped by CAA and Jackoway Tyerman.

[72teeth]

OG ENDING OR GTFO!

[Jeremy Blackman]

JGL OR NEGL!

[MacGuffin]

Juliette Lewis to Star in 'Night of Cabiria' Remake
The new movie, "The Days of Mary," will be helmed by director Brad Michael Gilbert.
Source: THR

Federico Fellini's Nights in Cabiria is getting a contemporary re-imagining, one that will star Juliette Lewis and be titled The Days of Mary.

The original movie, written by Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaino and Tullio Pinelli, followed a prostitute looking for love in Rome but finding only heartache. It won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1958. The movie was remade as a Bob Fosse musical starring Shirley MacLaine in 1969 titled Sweet Charity.

The new movie, being directed by The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond helmer Brad Michael Gilbert, moves the action to Reno, Nevada. Gilbert also wrote the script play with Meg McGarry.

Constellation Entertainment acquired the rights to the Cabiria screenplay from the Fellini estate. Mike S. Ryan, who produced Teardrop Diamond, will produce along with Gilbert. Brandy Lewis will co-produce.

Executive producing is Robbie Little (The Last Station). Little's outfit, The Little Film Company, is handling international sales for Days of Mary and will introduce the project to foreign buyers for the first time in Cannes.

Lewis's recent credits include comedies The Switch and Due Date and was a member of the cast of NBC's The Firm.

[MacGuffin]

Exclusive: Martha Marcy May Marlene Director Preps Exorcist for TV
Source: Vulture

What an excellent day for an exorcism! Nearly 40 years after The Exorcist became the first horror movie ever to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, Hollywood has again become possessed with William Peter Blatty's best seller.

Sean Durkin, the writer-director of last year's excellent but criminally underseen Elizabeth Olsen thriller Martha Marcy May Marlene, is adapting the fiendish classic into a ten-episode television series, this time backed by Morgan Creek and produced by Roy Lee, the executive producer of films like The Departed and The Ring.

Unlike the iconic 1973 film, Durkin's version of The Exorcist follows the events leading up to a demonic possession and especially the after-effects of how a family copes with it: In short, not well (really, after you start seeing stuff like this, can you blame them?), and when medical and psychiatric explanations fail, the desperate family turns to the church, with Father Damien Karras finally brought in to attempt the exorcism.

The Exorcist TV series won't be formally shopped to networks for another two weeks, but executives are already calling seeking meetings to inquire about landing the Durkin update.

Meanwhile, Transformers and Real Steel producer Don Murphy and Susan Montford's Angryfilms are developing their own TV series that deals with the eviction of unwanted demons, The Exorcist Handbook. "This is an original series, not another remake," said Murphy, in an interview with Vulture. "It's all about the main character, who [only] became an exorcist to help the woman he loves. It's going to be intense and scary."

Murphy did his undergraduate work at Georgetown University and, accordingly, his Handbook has hired on a Jesuit priest who is an actual exorcist as a consultant. Take that, unclean spirits!

[Reel]

don't fuck with the classics

[Pubrick]

What are you talking about? That's a tv mini series adaptation made 15 years ago.

Stephen king made it in response to the film as it was based on his teleplay and stuck closely to the book.

Kubrick's film remains the definitive version of the story. Recently even king himself has come round to admitting that.

[Reel]

just an example of making a miniseries out of something when the movie was already great has totally sucked balls.

[Pubrick]

Oh I see. I didn't read the post before you. I thought it was a weird thing to suddenly bring up unless you thought it was new or something.

I think remakes are mostly useless but I've come to the conclusion that they are also mostly harmless.

If the remake improves on the original then great, we're treated to a better movie and it can sit side by side with the old one or maybe supercede it. If it sucks, then it will be promptly forgotten and the status of the original will remain not only unsullied but possibly cemented even stronger.

[diggler]

I had forgotten what a great movie the original Taking of Pelham 123 was until the Denzel remake came along. Didn't care much for the remake, but the original holds up extremely well.

[Reel]

my favorite remake is Let Me In. Got everything right, but doesn't detract from the experience of the original.

[MacGuffin]

Rapper/Actor Common To Star In Remake Of Francois Truffaut's 'The Man Who Loved Women'
Source: Playlist

Perhaps we should all agree the term "urban update" should be kept as far away from studio pitches as possible? The descriptor -- besides sounding like a mandatory software patch -- just does not do the film it's touting any favors whatsoever, but that hasn't stopped the latest remake to be deigned as such from picking up a charismatic leading man in rapper/actor Common, and worthy source material in Francois Truffaut's 1977 film "The Man Who Loved Women."

Shadow and Act report the film, which comes after a pretty dismal Blake Edwards remake starring Burt Reynolds and Julie Andrews, will transplant the original film's Paris location to Buenos Aires, where Marc Guiness (Common) decides to pen a memoir about the myriad relationships throughout his life. First-time feature director J. Kevin Swain, who has 'til now made a name with music videos and, er, "Being Bobby Brown," will helm the project, and is pursuing a high profile cast for the leading ladies, with names such as Alicia Keys, Taraji P. Henson, Kerry Washington, Frida Pinto and Eva Marcelle being thrown into the mix/pursued/wishlisted.

Truffaut's original film, starring Charles Denner and Brigitte Fossey, ranks as one of the director's more minor efforts for sure, with the featherweight plot barely held together by some amusing dialogue and visual gags, so a remake is not the worst thing to happen to the film's legacy (although Blake Edwards' version came close). Common remains a solid choice though, as he was compelling week-to-week on FX's western series, "Hell on Wheels," and his dynamic with Queen Latifah in the romantic comedy "Just Wright" saved that film entirely. Let's just hope those behind this new project transcend the ridiculous label they've slapped on the film to advertise with.

[MacGuffin]

Exclusive: Disney's The Rocketeer Being Reloaded
Source: Vulture

Now that Disney's troubled movie studio is under new management, our spies tells us that, curiously, one of the first properties to be developed for a feature film is a reboot of 1991's thirties-set adventure film, The Rocketeer.

We say 'curiously' because while the property was actually a flop at the time, its similarity to the current Disney-Marvel cash cow Iron Man is more than a little striking: In it, a racing pilot named Cliff Secord (Billy Campbell) discovers a rocket-pack prototype in his stunt plane, hidden there by the gangsters who stole it from Howard Hughes; Secord tries it out, and, like Tony Stark, quickly discovers that a) flying without a plane is SO cool, and b) you gotta fight the bad guys (including Timothy Dalton, who two years prior had starred as James Bond for the second time) and save the girl (a luminous Jennifer Connelly).

While both properties are based on comic books, Iron Man actually arrived on the scene first: The Rocketeer was first published in 1982 by tiny (and now, sadly, defunct) Pacific Comics, and was conceived by artist Dave Stevens as an homage to the serial action heroes of the thirties. By the time Disney released The Rocketeer in 1991, Pacific had already been liquidated for half a decade. Stevens lost a battle with leukemia in March 2008 – just two months before Marvel's adaptation of Iron Man was released.

We're told the studio will soon be meeting with various writers to come up with a take. But its reappearance at Disney now, of course, begs the question: Why? What is new studio chief Alan Horn up to? It could be an early sign that the former Warner Bros. chief doesn't just view his new job at Disney Studios as that of a mere portfolio manager, content to make sure acquisitions like Marvel, The Muppets, and Pixar, which keep churning out their own properties as Disney's brand withers. That would be good news, indeed.