No one should be surprised anymore at these announcements, but: DreamWorks and Working Title Films are remaking Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-winning noir Rebecca, because nothing is sacred. At least they've got people at the wheel with respectable creds; veteran producers Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner are onboard while Eastern Promises screenwriter Steven Knight is scripting based on Daphne du Maurier's original 1938 novel, which saw a few deviations when Hitch made his version (which, incidentally, went on to be the only Best Picture Oscar-winner of his career).
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Look, I don't know about you but I've often wondered what Phil Lord and Chris Miller's excellent animated tale Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs would look like as live-action film. I mean come on, an ice cream snow day? How can we make this happen, world?! Well, one enterprising filmmaker went ahead and actually managed to recreate Cloudy using live actors and some fantastic CG work, nailing details like spray on shoes and the Jell-O mansion with impressive panache. (One glaring exception: Where is Steve??) Watch the short, created by Megasteakman for Virgin Radio's 2012 Fake Film Contest, and throw 'em a vote for making the streets rain with ginormous, terrifying, and deliciously realistic-looking donuts.
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Craig Brewer knows that some of you are skeptical about his remake of Footloose, the 1984 Kevin Bacon teen classic about lusty high-schoolers who kick off their Sunday shoes, strain against their small town conservative parents, and "angry dance" their way to prom. But the director, who helped bring rap music to the Academy's attention in his Oscar-winning Hustle & Flow (and next chained Christina Ricci to a radiator in Black Snake Moan, another tale set in the Southern region where Brewer was raised), comes at it with a fan's devotion and with an awareness of how religion, morality and politics still overlap in the lives of teenagers today. And, as he watched Kevin Bacon do when he was a kid watching Footloose on the big screen, Brewer admits to indulging in his fair share of "angry dancing."
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The line "I AM the law!" might yet still be spoken in Lionsgate's 2012 Dredd, the Karl Urban-starring remake of the gloriously cheesy Sylvester Stallone vehicle about a decorated officer wrongfully accused in a dystopian future, but it looks like director Pete Travis won't be uttering any iteration of that forceful declaration of authority. According to the L.A. Times, Travis has been booted from the remake, which is currently in post-production, while screenwriter Alex Garland steps in to make such significant changes that he might even seek a co-director credit.
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As soon as he took the reins on this week's remake of Sam Peckinpah's brutal 1971 classic Straw Dogs, writer-director Rod Lurie knew the haters would come in droves. "From the minute we announced it everybody was on my ass in the blogosphere, telling me that I couldn't carry his jockstrap and I'll never be Sam Peckinpah," Lurie told Movieline on the eve of his film's release. But with his updated take on the Peckinpah film, which transplants the violent tale to the American South and re-envisions protagonists David and Amy Sumner (James Marsden and Kate Bosworth) as a Hollywood couple fighting off fire and brimstone-raised good ol' boys, Lurie was never attempting to mimic Peckinpah at all -- in fact, he was doing just the opposite.
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If ever there was a time for a well-placed "Noooooo!" it's now, upon the news that Alcon Entertainment and Warner Bros. are planning to remake Kathryn Bigelow's seminal 1991 surfing themed cop thriller Point Break. What have the producers got planned and what has it got to do with Salt and gun-fu?
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Before there was Dreamgirls the musical (let alone Dreamgirls the movie) there was Sparkle, the deliciously melodramatic 1976 R&B musical about the ups and downs of a trio of singing sisters from Harlem who make it big in 1950s New York. The tale was loosely, infamously based on the real-life experiences of The Supremes and lead singer Diana Ross's ascent to solo stardom, but Sparkle had a dark edge, with threats like drugs, criminals, and jealousy around every corner.
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Back when Movieline posted the bonkers-adorable trailer for genre master Takashi Miike's Ninja Kids!!!, about -- what else -- children studying at a school for ninjas, it seemed unlikely that the family-friendly manga and anime adaptation would go much farther than the genre/foreign crowd. However, that was before plans were reportedly in the works to adapt Miike's film into an Americanized remake. After all, every generation deserves their own 3 Ninjas!
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Looks like Spike Lee got his rumored dream star for the Oldboy film he's helming: Deadline reports that Josh Brolin will lead the English-language remake of Park Chan-wook's 2003 thriller about a man held prisoner for 15 years who sets out for revenge upon release. With Brolin onboard, will Christian Bale sign on next as his mysterious foil? (And how faithful will Lee's remake be to the brutality of the original?)
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Devotees of Tom Holland's 1985 vampire pic Fright Night, Anton Yelchin would like to allay your fears about Craig Gillespie's remake of the horror cult classic. The new Fright Night, in theaters today, pays loving homage to the original even as it updates the setting to suburban Las Vegas, turns teen hero Charley Brewster (Yelchin) into a savvy, sneaker-freak cool kid with a hot girlfriend (Imogen Poots), and makes new changes to Fright Night's cast of characters, from the dangerously sexy vampire next door (Colin Farrell) to the angry geek "Evil" Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to the drastically re-imagined Peter Vincent (David Tennant), now a Criss Angel-like Vegas magician with a penthouse suit on the Strip.
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Fans of Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, steel yourself: The guy who last put Denzel Washington on top of a runaway train (and made bank at the box office doing so) wants to remake the groundbreaking 1969 Western. Deadline reports that director Tony Scott -- whose most recent film was last year's Unstoppable -- is negotiating to reboot the classic Peckinpah film. He also wants to remake his own Top Gun, so clearly nothing is sacred. Read the news after the jump and weep into your cowboy boots.
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Don't be surprised if Craig Gillespie's new, updated Fright Night bears only partial resemblance to the 1985 cult horror-comedy of the same name; with a suburban Las Vegas setting, a much cooler teen protagonist, and a modern milieu filled with iPods and 4G-equipped cell phones, the tale of a high schooler's (Anton Yelchin) battle against the seductive vampire who moves in next door (Colin Farrell) is more like a slick second-cousin to the totally '80s Chris Sarandon/William Ragsdale-starring original. And as such, 22-year-old Christopher Mintz-Plasse isn't your parents' "Evil" Ed Thompson. Far from it.
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Director Len Wiseman may not be taking Colin Farrell's Doug Quaid to Mars in his "realistic," more Philip K. Dicksian Total Recall remake, and his version may be "a hard PG-13" instead of the original film's R-rating. But rest assured, he's staying true to the best part of Paul Verhoeven's Arnie-starring 1990 classic: The three-breasted woman. "You can't make a Total Recall without certain things," Wiseman told Collider at Comic-Con. Indeed. [Collider]
Confirming yesterday's report that producer Sam Raimi's Ghost House Pictures is moving forward on an Evil Dead remake, to be helmed by Uruguayan director Fede Alvarez, a press release today also shared the new tidbit that Alvarez's and Rodo Sayagues's script is being polished by none other then Juno Oscar-winner Diablo Cody.
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The new trailer for Craig Brewer's Footloose remake debuted today, offering your first sneak peek at the contemporized, MTV-friendly update of the 1984 Kevin Bacon classic. To learn more about Brewer's fresh-but-faithful take on the trailblazing dance pic, Movieline spoke with star and award-winning dancer Kenny Wormald, your new Ren McCormack. (To answer your first question: Yes, he's a fan of the original, even though it came out the year he was born.)
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