The new discussion thread for movie/tv series re-makes.

[lemec]

Hello, I thought I would dedicate this new thread to talking about all the movie and television series re-makes that are due out at the theater or are in production.


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Today, I happen to find these on the "imdb."

The Internet Movie Database wrote:

The Equalizer (2007 (announced)
Knight Rider (2008 (pre-production)

There is no listing of actors at this time.


I did not think The Equalizer was that popular, but they will re-make anything,haha.

I saw it a couple times, I guess it was a cool show for the most part.


Anyway, please feel free to talk about upcoming re-makes here.


Enjoy!

[Doc]

I've seen the trailers for Miami Vice and it looks great. When I first heard it was being made, I expected it to be brought to the big screen all campy, with actors like Owen Wilson as Crockett and Chris Tucker as Tubbs.

I am pleasantly surprised at the tone.

[lemec]

I've seen the trailers for Miami Vice and it looks great. When I first heard it was being made, I expected it to be brought to the big screen all campy, with actors like Owen Wilson as Crockett and Chris Tucker as Tubbs.

I am pleasantly surprised at the tone.

Yes,Doc! I wholeheartedly agree with you!

Also, I love the fact that Michael Mann* has written and directed the film!



* http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000520/


This Friday, I will have the chance to find out how good it really is!

[Doc]

I really wasn't expecting to find it so intriguing. I was afraid that I was simply celebrating the relevance of my 80's upbringing , but many other people (not of my generation) find it intriguing as well.

And you're right--I don't think it hurts any film to be directed by Mann!

[Grey Mouser]

I hear a remake of the Brit TV series The Prisoner is on the cards.

[lemec]

I give Miami Vice an A!

It was what I expected from Michael Mann.



The prisoner sounds way cool, I hope to see that when it comes to America.

[devilchicken]

I hear a remake of the Brit TV series The Prisoner is on the cards.

I'm not so sure about redoing the Prisoner. The original was so far ahead of its time, looking at it even today - there's no way any network would approve the budget for something on a par with the original.

The tendency I think will be to sell-out and remove many of the subtexts that gave the original its long lasting appeal.

If you've seen the original series in its entirety you'll know what I mean.

[lemec]

This re-make sounds good!

BBC.com wrote:

Peter Jackson to film Dam Busters
The Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is to remake classic British war film The Dam Busters, he has told film industry trade paper Screen Daily.
Jackson will produce the movie, with King Kong animator Christian Rivers in the director's chair.

Jackson said it would be "as authentic as possible and as close to the spirit of the original as possible".

The 1954 film told the true story of how Britain developed bouncing bombs to destroy German dams in World War II.

Jackson says he first saw the film as a child and "really loved it".
"There's that wonderful mentality of the British during the war - that heads-down, persevering, keep-on-plugging-away mentality which is the spirit of Dam Busters," he told Screen Daily.

Based on a book by Paul Brickhill, the original film starred Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis, who developed the bomb, and Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the RAF bombing mission.

Jackson asked his agent to inquire about the possibility of remaking the film at the same time as he was securing the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy in the 1990s.


"He came back and said that [film company] Icon had the rights and that Mel Gibson was going to direct and possibly act in it," Jackson said.
"Obviously that didn't happen."

The remake is set to use details of the bombing mission which were still classified at the time the original film was made by director Michael Anderson.

"So much of it was still secret," said Jackson. "They weren't even allowed to show the bomb itself and had to create a fictionalised bomb."

The project is due to start filming next year, with a budget of $30-40m (£16-21m).

Television presenter Sir David Frost will be an executive producer on the movie as he owns the rights to the book.

Jackson's next project as director will be an adaptation of Alice Sebold's novel The Lovely Bones.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5301998.stm

[David Mosley]

Peter Jackson to film Dam Busters

Grr! Will PJ please stop with the re-makes and film The Hobbit instead!!

I have to say that The Dam Busters is one of those films that really doesn't need to be re-made.

[lemec]

Grr! Will PJ please stop with the re-makes and film The Hobbit instead!!

I have to say that The Dam Busters is one of those films that really doesn't need to be re-made.

David,

I never saw the original,and you know me and war films.


It sounded good, at first, but I see what you mean.


I was going to joke in the other thread,which lists the public domain literature, that I am going to re-make "At the Earth's Core"!

It's like, oh, I loved these movies as a childhood, so I'm gonna re-make them all!


Speaking of childhood, judging from the cast and director of that live-action
Transformers movie, it must only be for children. I had hoped they would include the grown-ups on that one. haha

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0418279/

[David Mosley]

There was an article in The Times yesterday about the wave of remakes that Hollywood is pumping out at the moment:

Don't look now – it's another remake
Bob Stanley
Why revamp The Wicker Man? Like so many other imitations, it will not match the original

AT THE PHOENIX cinema, East Finchley, director Robin Hardy was fielding questions on his 1973 cult movie The Wicker Man, questions he’d most likely been asked dozens of times before. Yes, the film was initially a B-movie support to Don’t Look Now. Yes, Britt Ekland had a body double because she thought her bum was a bit “slopy”. No, he hadn’t seen the re-make, due in British cinemas this week, “but” — he left a short, but quite deliberate, pause — “I have read the script”. The chill that filled the auditorium couldn’t have been more pronounced if Christopher Lee had walked in with a tray of ice cream.

The second Wicker Man is directed by Neil LaBute, no mug, someone who made his name with Your Friends and Neighbours and In the Company of Men, both darkly shocking films. It stars Nicolas Cage and Ellen Burstyn, both good actors. Still, it’ll be awful, an embarrassment. Without seeing the film, everyone who has seen the original knows this to be true.

At the turn of the Eighties, remakes were not ten a penny. John Travolta starred in Brian De Palma’s reworking of Blow Up as Blow Out, The Postman Always Rings Twice was newly scripted by David Mamet, and the barely known Jim McBride fathered an audacious take on Godard’s Breathless. All have their advocates. All three took the originals and made them afresh for the glossy Eighties — tougher, bleaker and (arguably) sexier.

What has changed since is the reason for remodelling old movies. If you have a good idea, no one is complaining. King Kong could be churned out every ten years and the special effects would be more modern, more realistic each time. High Society always fares badly in off-hand Hollywood histories, but if you’re going to have the nerve to remake The Philadelphia Story, throwing in a bunch of Cole Porter’s best songs isn’t such a bad place to start.

The Wicker Man, on the other hand, has a soundtrack so influential it has spawned a British folk revival almost single-handedly. A folk legend in itself, the mastertapes were believed to have been used as ballast in the construction of the M3 until they were finally discovered, restored, and released on CD in 2002. Tampering with the soundtrack is akin to remaking A Hard Day’s Night or Jailhouse Rock with McFly at the helm.

Labute could justifiably be called lazy: The Wicker Man is a great yarn — reheating it for an American audience largely ignorant of Hardy’s original is guaranteed to garner some praise and profit. Strangely, no directors seem to want to remake films that were stinkers to start with. LaBute, Tim Burton (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Gus Van Sant (the pointless replica of Psycho) are hardly stretching themselves. If they turned their hand to improving lousy films such as the Madonna movie Shanghai Surprise, I’d be all praise. But when Hollywood plunders its past, it tends to pick on likeable trash (Mission: Impossible) or comedies where the original has long passed its sell-by date (The Nutty Professor). No one is about to refilm the 1970s gangster movie The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

There is also the fear that the original will have been dumbed down. Retuning The Avengers with Uma Thurman as Mrs Peel wasn’t necessarily a bad idea. Yet it was no surprise when the movie ignored the TV Peel’s scientific background, mastery of fencing, love of sculpture, and subtle superiority to the womanising John Steed — all the things that made her so alluring in the first place. What remained in the movie was a woman in a catsuit.

This could be read as simple Hollywood-bashing; Little Englanders protecting their heritage from men with Lacostes tucked in to their pants. Still, as long as the likes of Sylvester Stallone are let loose on movies such as Get Carter, you have to laugh. Of course, the results are risible: Stallone replaces the racecourse scene with a golf course scene, wears shades throughout in spite of the relentless drizzle and, unlike Michael Caine’s thoroughly brutal Carter, comes over as a thug with a heart of gold in near-incestuous scenes with his niece.

Clearly, though, Stallone loved Mike Hodges’s original movie. On a trip to Britain he revisited the multistorey in Gateshead where Bryan Mosley met his end. Stallone was shocked to hear that the car park was due for demolition and made a passionate plea for its preservation. Bizarrely, it worked. They should attach a blue plaque — “saved by Sly”.

Stallone, then, was indulging himself, fooling around with one of his favourite films. It can’t have occurred to him that anyone who had seen the original would call his bluff. He couldn’t hope to match the steely-grey coldness of the original, the unbelievably stark backdrop of Newcastle of the early Seventies. He didn’t even try. Far better directors have engaged in similar follies. The Coen brothers’ Ladykillers was loud and hysterical, while The Limey, Stephen Soderbergh’s sequel to Ken Loach’s Poor Cow, featured Terence Stamp spouting faux cockney-isms such as “Oi trousers, keep it handy!”

This is what rankles. These remakes are an arrogant form of tourism and, as such, reinforce the clichéd notion that America feels it has the right to use the rest of the world as a cultural pick’n’mix. The Wicker Man will, as a result, get people’s backs up. When Robin Hardy read the new script, he duly noted that the location had been changed from a remote Scottish island to the West Coast of America, and that much of the pagan imagery was gone. He expected as much, but one thing about the script made him think Neil LaBute had missed the point of his original movie. It wasn’t funny.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....1-2334090.html

[devilchicken]

Rumour has it that fresh from 300, Gerard Butler is set to play Snake Plissken in a remake of Escape From New York..

[Kamelion]

I read the other day that a remake of Hellraiser is being made, with Clive Barker himself writing it! He fancies a chance to make a new version of the film and tie it more closely to his original Hellbound Heart novella as well as to the upcoming Scarlet Gospels, which feature both Pinhead and Harry d'Amour. Can't wait!