Conventional wisdom often dictates that remakes are inherently bad and indicative of Hollywood's dearth of fresh ideas.
I've long argued for the validity of the remake as a concept. Some of my favourite movies (1978's Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1986's The Fly, 2002's The Ring) are remakes and there's no shortage of great examples. I even found some enjoyment in the recent Point Break remake. Don't judge me.
To celebrate my positive attitude to remakes, here are five currently being planned that have the potential to be buck the prevailing perception and be pretty great.
The Beguiled
The recently announced remake of the 1971 cult classic inspired this blog entry, and I couldn't be more excited for it.
In one of his many collaborations with director Don Siegel (Coogan's Bluff, Dirty Harry) Clint Eastwood starred in the original as a wounded Union soldier saved from the brink of death by the residents of a girls' boarding school in Louisiana near the end of the American Civil War.
As he is nursed back to health and begins interacting with the ladies tending over him, jealously and suspicion boil up and threaten to manifest violently. Can you just imagine what a filmmaker like Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost In Translation) could do with a set-up like that?
This project is especially noteworthy as the dreamlike quality that permeates Coppola's filmography is highly reminiscent of the woozy horror explored in The Beguiled. This is a creative match made in heaven.
It
The original 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's It was technically a mini-series, but I'd wager most people discovered it via VHS.
Hollywood's been trying to get a big-screen remake going for ages, and the project suffered a blow last year when Beasts Of No Nation and True Detective (season one!) director Cary Fukunaga abandoned his ambitious plans for a two-film mounting of the story over creative conflict with the studio.
This beloved 2011 dramedy about the relationship that develops between a rich paraplegic and his street-smart helper is one of the most successful films ever to come out of France, earning more than $400 million at the global box office.
That kind of moolah pretty much guarantees an American remake, and it recently leaked that Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad) and Kevin Hart (Ride Along) are planning to take over the roles so winningly essayed by François Cluzet and Omay Sy in the original.
The French film deftly superceded the TV movie-trappings of the set-up, something that will probably prove a little more difficult in an American context, but a task for which I'm confident Cranston and Hart are well-suited.
Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (The Talented Mr Ripley), Strangers on a Train remains one of the master director's most enduringly effective films. The story follows a young tennis player with a bright future who gets mixed up in a murder plot after engaging a polite stranger in conversation. The new version would apparently centre around an actor in the midst of an Oscar campaign - how cool does that sound?
The project has unfortunately since stalled, but that seems to happen all the time with Fincher, and several of the projects he moved on to have fallen over as well, so I'm holding out hope that this one still might happen.
I wouldn't be averse to a remake of The Birds, either. That somehow feels inevitable.
The Blob
Granted, there is a lot of potential for suckage here, but I truly believe in the potential awesomeness of a Blob remake. Or, another Blob remake, I should say, as the 1958 horror classic has already been remade once, in 1988, with highly entertaining results.
The key here will be to resist the temptation to go all CGI and use as many practical effects as possible. CGI still hasn't perfected oozing. And this movie needs a lot of oozing.
The chance to direct a new Blob remake has seemingly been turned down by every hot young horror director in Hollywood - Saw creator James Wan even vocally dissed the prospect.
Halloween remake helmer Rob Zombie was attached for a while, but the project only finally gained traction after Zombie was replaced by the visionary auteur that is ... Simon West (Con Air, The Expendables 2). Which doesn't bode particularly well. I remain curious over what Zombie would've done with material, but Samuel L. Jackson has since joined the cast, and that can only be a good thing.
