Let us take this time to bemoan Hollywood’s love affair with unnecessary remakes. DreamWorks and Working Title Films are reportedly set on remaking Alfred Hitchcock‘s Academy Award-winning Rebecca because, oh, who the hell knows why? Hitchcock’s 1940 film garnered him his sole Best Picture Oscar and remains one of his finest and most beloved films. The original starred no less than Laurence Olivier as the rich Maxim de Winter, who marries the innocent Joan Fontaine, and takes her back to his mansion, where she slowly discovers the weird hold the deceased Mrs. de Winter (that’s Rebecca to you) has over the entire household. That’s just the very tip of the iceberg of Rebecca, which is twisty and twisted and smart and evocative and really a story about love. Which is why the guy who wrote Eastern Promises (and a pair of other internationally-tinged thrillers) is going to pen a new version for the screen. Of course.

If you ask me, Brian De Palma has been really underperforming over the last decade or so. I think I remember seeing Femme Fatale and The Black Dahlia from him, and that’s about it. When was the last time I was truly excited to see a De Palma film? You’d have to go all the way back to when he worked with Nic Cage on Snake Eyes. Thankfully, the director has a new project in the works, and while it’s not quite as exciting as a re-pairing with Nic Cage, it does sound appropriately ridiculous. This time he’s working on a remake of a Burt Reynolds movie, with Jason Statham in the Burt Reynolds role. Probably not a lot of people remember 1986’s Heat, because by all accounts it was pretty bad. It’s the type of movie that goes through multiple directors over the course of its production, and then eventually forces the guy who has to take credit for directing to not even use his real name.

Internationally loved cologne salesman, Charles Bronson, was already a massive star by the time he made Death Wish, but it’s his role as Paul Kersey that might be his most famous simply because he owns it completely. Sure he’s rugged and charismatic in The Dirty Dozen, he’s surprisingly vulnerable in The Great Escape, but in the Death Wish movies he’s in command and the streets bow down to him. So maybe a remake is in order? According to the LA Times, that’s the thinking of MGM and Paramount, and the partnership wants Joe Carnahan to clean up from fighting wolves for The Grey and come help them out with it. It must be tough coming out of bankruptcy, but MGM really has nothing except remake concepts going for them. That’s pretty damned sad. Of course, the big question with a remake like this (beyond the fact that remakes aren’t doing good business currently) is how to re-create something that tapped into a social feeling in the 1970s. The same heat just isn’t there, there is no grand panic in society of rising crime rates and a feeling of helplessness in the face of a bewildered law enforcement culture. In fact, police are so good at doing their jobs now, they even find time to pepper spray people in the face at random. So who becomes the villain here? And even better, who could possibly replace Charles Bronson as Paul Kersey? Jason Statham did the job recently for The Mechanic, but [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

We can complain all we want, rationalize, or hope for the best, but the easiest way to stop the remake assault that studios have foisted upon audiences is not to pay for it. The studio system still hasn’t found a silver bullet for killing the monster of low attendance, and 2011 might have been the worst wake-up call they could get. Movie attendance fell by 4.4% from 2010, down to the lowest level since 1995. The problematic silver lining is that foreign sales are higher, which could result in even more broadly-appealing (and “appealing” is used generously here) movies that are generic and treat dialogue like a second-class citizen. On the losing side of the field (the one where producers aren’t having Gatorade dumped on them), are the remakes of 2011. Remakes are thought to be attractive because they come with built-in name recognition for audiences, and development has already been partially done for a story that’s already proven itself as a money-maker. For fans, they’re also infuriating because they signal both a lack of creativity coming out of an industry built on it and the potential (likely) bastardization of something we hold dear (and, yes, of course the original is still out there; it’s the principle of the thing). So it may come as pleasant news for some to see that remakes, regardless of their quality of genre, failed spectacularly at the box office this year. It’s the kind of thing that may just deter producers from trying to [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Get ready to cringe, people who hate the idea of remakes, reimaginings, and redos, the latest news about the Evil Dead remake is a doozy. Anybody who is a fan of the original Evil Dead movies, or any of Sam Raimi’s work in general, knows the name Bruce Campbell. He of big chin and cocky attitude is such a strong personality, such a big screen presence, that finding somebody to replace him in his iconic, fame-making role as Ash was probably the biggest hurdle that this remake had in front of it. How many young actors can you think of out there that could feasibly replace Bruce Campbell and not make it seem like a total letdown when he chops his hand off? I can’t think of many. Maybe Paul Dano would have been fun, just for the overacting. Well, instead of dealing with this problem head-on and trying to find the perfect person to play the new Ash, it looks like the creative minds behind this new Evil Dead are throwing us a curveball. In this movie, the main character is no longer Ash. Ash is now Mia, and the role is going might be played by…Lily Collins. I know what you’re asking yourself right now, you’re asking yourself, “Who the heck is Lily Collins?” I know, I had the same reaction. Well, she’s a young actress who was not only in the movie Priest (did anyone go see that one?), but she was also the daughter in The [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The holidays are over now, so it’s back to business as usual in the movie blogging world. You know what that means: freaking out about prequels and remakes. Thankfully for us, some new reasons for worry have come down the pike via a chat The Playlist had with Alcon Entertainment producer Andrew Kosove. After talking a bit about the progress he’s having bringing the Black List script Prisoners to the big screen, he also had some stuff to say about Ridley Scott’s new Blade Runner project and the proposed Point Break remake that has been floating around. Is it looking like they’re really going to happen? About Scott’s enthusiasm for the new Blade Runner, Kosove said, “Here’s the thing about Ridley. Ridley is a special guy. He’s a force of nature. He’s got a lot of stuff that he’s working on. I believe it’s an extremely high priority for Ridley, that’s what he’s said to me. This project is moving forward aggressively in development.” Look at those words he’s using, high priority, aggressive, sounds like this thing is developing pretty fast. Or is it? The next few words out of his mouth don’t sound so confident. He went on to say, “Sometime in the first two months of the new year we’ll announce who the screenwriter will be and whether or not it’s a prequel or sequel. And then we’ll be off to the races.” They don’t even have a screenwriter or know if it’s going to be a sequel [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Well here we are in the last week of December, coming up on another 365 days of anger at the entertainment industry. In 52 installments, I’ve been upset about a wide range of topics, criticized directors, defended 3D, argued with my peers and said the f-word a whole lot, much to the disappointment of my mother. As a way of saying so long to 2011 and hello to the End of the World as We Know It (aka 2012), I wanted to take a brief look back at the previous year and pull the heaviest themes from Boiling Point and take a look at the recipients of my rage. So take off your shoes, grab a warm cup of cocoa and let’s take this journey together, provided you’re nowhere near me. If by some strange miracle you are near me, put your shoes on, put down my coffee cup and get the fuck out of my house.

Do you remember how there is somebody out there trying to put together a big screen re-boot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that doesn’t involve the property’s creator Joss Whedon, or is that a memory that you’ve repressed? Well, it’s happening, at least on some level. Warner Bros. wants the property to live on, and to that goal they hired a screenwriter named Whit Anderson to write a script some time ago. Unfortunately for those hoping for more Buffy, that script was submitted to the studio over the summer and Hero Complex has sources saying that the studio didn’t like it at all. Because of the disappointing words on page, the project has been sent back to square one and executives are looking for a new writer to take a crack at it. Someone Hero Complex describes as a “key player” in the production said of their progress so far, “If you’re going to bring it back, you have to do it right. Anderson came in with some great ideas and she had reinvented some of the lore and it was pretty cool but in the end there just wasn’t enough on the page.” So I guess now that the proposed film has hit a stumbling block the question has to be raised, is this the beginning of the end for a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or is the next writer who gets hired going to be able to do something with the property that the studio finds acceptable?

Indie director turned studio comedy director David Gordon Green has been talking about doing a remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror classic Suspiria for a couple years now. Back in March of this year, he insinuated that he would be making the remake his next film after the release of The Sitter. Well, The Sitter is out now, and it’s time for Green to move on to his next project, so what’s the deal with Suspiria? The director recently told IFC, “I’ve turned in the script. We’re just looking at casting and locations and trying to figure out budget and if it works.” Fans of remakes all over the world probably just let out a cheer at the news that the script is finished, but what is that about figuring out budgets? Does it seem likely that an agreement on the price of this thing will be reached, or is this a script likely to sit on the shelf because it can’t get financing? “I’ve been trying to make it for four years and trying to find the support entity to finance it,” Green says. “It’s a very specific movie and the horror genre is in a very specific place right now that’s very much inspired by the success of movies like Paranormal Activity that show you can make a very economical killing at the box office, so to speak.” That doesn’t sound good to me. Any remake of Argento’s work is going to have to be pretty visually astounding [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Back in the late 90s, expert director of schlock Paul Verhoeven took a stab at adapting one of legendary sci-fi novelist Robert Heinlein’s most popular stories, “Starship Troopers”, and the results were something that resembled Heinlein’s far-looking, satirical tale less than it did a B-level genre piece that was far more…well, schlocky. Starship Troopers was all about bad acting, big explosions, disgusting amounts of bug goop, and exploitative co-ed naked shower scenes. It may not have been an adaptation with a tone that was true to its source material, but it had its own kind of charm, you know? And since it was just made in the 90s, and it’s got special effects that actually hold up pretty well, you wouldn’t think there would be any need to revisit the material again. But you would be wrong. Or at least producer Neal Moritz thinks you’re wrong. You may have heard Moritz’s name before, he’s the Sony Pictures bigwig responsible for another recent remake; the upcoming and Colin Farrell-starring Total Recall. The similarities between these two projects are endless. The original Total Recall was also a Paul Verhoeven movie, it was also (very loosely) adapted from a story by a legendary science fiction writer (Philip K. Dick), and it was also something that nobody really thought needed to be remade. That film hasn’t hit theaters yet or anything, but Moritz must be really happy with what he’s seen of it, because with this new take on Starship Troopers he’s pretty clearly [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Roger Corman is probably the best known creator of B-movie cheese and exploitation junk of all time. Between the mid-60s and the early 90s he produced hundreds of cult films and even directed fifty of them himself. Despite the fact that he worked pretty exclusively in the lower brow side of the filmmaking world, he also launched a ton of big careers by giving talented filmmakers their first shot and he became a hugely influential figure in the Hollywood world. Even today, his legacy is starting to thrive through remakes and reboots of his past projects. Things like the new Death Race and the new Piranha 3D are keeping the memories of junk cinema’s past alive. And according to Variety, there is at least one more Corman reboot on the way. Dry County Entertainment has gotten the rights to 80s slasher Chopping Mall, and they’re poised to put their own spin on it. In the original version of Chopping Mall, a group of teenagers get locked inside of a shopping mall and have to fend off robotic security guards that have turned murderous and prove to be very deadly. This proposed new version of the shopping mall slasher wouldn’t be exactly like that, according to Dry County head Robert Hall, who says, “It will retain the basic concept of young people trapped in a mall; however, the story will have a darker, supernatural spin.” I guess that supernatural spin thing could be pretty controversial. Will this piss off some Chopping [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

After Gary Oldman reportedly passed on the role, Ken Watanabe (an actual Japanese person!) has been offered the part of The Colonel in the remake of Akira. The fine folks at Twitch dropped the news, and they also point out that Watanabe’s work in the United States has all been through Warner Bros. so the partnership makes a lot of sense. What doesn’t exactly make sense is why they didn’t go to him first. His profile is fairly high after so many years in the spotlight, especially after coming through strong in Inception. What also still doesn’t make sense is why all the characters are keeping their Japanese names while being completely white bread. If everyone signs on the dotted line and Watanabe ends up calling Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart by the names from the Manga (while they simply call him The Colonel), it’s going to sound more than a little bizarre. Hooray for Americanized remakes!

One of Disney’s biggest historical successes came back in 1954 when they released a live action version of the Jules Verne story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. They pumped a huge amount of money into that movie and all of its giant squid spectacle, and then saw their risky investment pay off when it became a hit. That was pretty much the beginning of Disney in the live action movie game. 1954 was a long time ago though, and there’s now probably a couple generations of people who have never seen that film, which is so important to Disney history. To fix that, the studio has been working on a remake for a while. So far the Leagues remake has been slow to get off the ground. At one point McG was set to be in charge of the whole thing, and a whole slew of different screenwriters were helping the process along, but that all fell apart. More recently David Fincher has been said to be involved in getting this one going, but it’s still not clear where exactly it fits into his schedule. The rumblings of Fincher making this movie soon seem to be getting a bit more credibility though, as Deadline Nantes is reporting that Se7en scribe Andrew Kevin Walker has been brought on board to help Fincher shape the re-told tales of Captain Nemo. There are probably about a million jokes to be made right now about all of the vile things that were in Se7en, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Alexander Aja continues his work with remakes as the producer of a forthcoming remake of William Lustig‘s brilliant Maniac – whose ultra-violence caused Gene Siskel to famously storm out of the theater and rail against it on his show with Roger Ebert. The movie will be directed by Franck Khalfoun – a talent who delivered the parking garage stalker flick P2 and who has an extra C in his first name. News of a remake, especially something as grisly and revered as this movie, needs some sort of sugar to help the medicine go down. The sugar this time is Elijah Wood – a giant spoonful of happy feet who will be stepping well outside his wheelhouse to play the serial killer. Say what you will about his role in Sin City, but that was not the blood-soaked mayhem and confusion that this murdering character demands. They are as different as the black and white Wood was painted with as Kevin, the silent cannibal. Also, in a strange turn of rumored events, Badass Digest is reporting that unnamed sources are claiming the movie (or at least its kills) will be shot POV. It’s an interesting, if unoriginal, idea, and it could very well work beautifully. The only real concern is when the camera will cut away (if it’s just the kills in POV), because so much of Maniac was brought to life by Joe Spinell‘s performance. He killed without mercy or understanding, and him staring on at his own work [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Horror director Larry Cohen has a number of memorable movies under his belt. He’s the guy responsible for cult movies like Black Caesar, It’s Alive, and the other, other werewolf movie from 1981 Full Moon High. But it’s his 1976 film God Told Me To, a movie about a series of murders committed by people who say they are following the instructions of God, that looks like it’s up for a remake. Who is trying to get their hands on the rights to a movie that deals with murder and religion like that? It’s best to let the story play out in the same words it did in a recent issue of Film Comment: “The 70-year-old Cohen mentioned that he had just come from a meeting with an interesting young Frenchman who was seeking the rights to remake God Told Me To. ‘What’s his name?’ inquired the staffer. ‘I don’t remember, but he gave me some DVDs of his films.’ The director rummaged in a bag and produced copies of Irreversible and Enter the Void.” That’s right, not only did a 70-year-old man not realize he was talking to Gaspar Noé, he now has been given copies of both Irreversible and Enter the Void, which he will watch with seemingly having no idea what to expect out of them. This story makes me smile. I hope that Cohen still has a strong love for the grotesque living inside of him.

One of the biggest, most well liked movies of this summer was Joe Cornish’s hoods vs. aliens movie Attack the Block. Well, if you’re talking to only films buffs that is. I don’t think too many regular people ever heard about the movie let alone went to see it. But those of us privy to genre film weirdness totally dug Cornish’s unique yet sort of old school approach to doing an alien invasion/monster movie. Surely there’s got to be a cult of Attack the Block loyalists growing somewhere out there in the land of the Internet, and I bet they’re thirsty for more punk on gorilla dog violence. Well, according to comments that Cornish recently gave IFC, some random day happening an unknowable length of time from now just might be your lucky day! Probably.

Ever since Brazilian director Jose Padilha was confirmed to direct MGM’s long-gestating Robocop reboot, there has been the lingering question as to what would happen to all of the work the original director, Darren Aronofsky, put into the project. Aronofsky was all set to take on Robocop, and had even written a script, but some looming bankruptcy problems with MGM and an otherwise full schedule for Aronofsky put the kibosh on all of that. Well, Crave recently sat down with Padilha to talk about his upcoming Elite Squad 2, and eventually steered the conversation toward the subject of Robocop. When asked about the Aronofsky script, Padilha said, “I haven’t read Aronofsky’s script. Aronofsky is a great director. I love his films. I am very proud because I saw Pi in the opening Sundance screening and I loved it. So Aronofsky’s great. I have my own take on Robocop. I know what his take was and it’s totally different. It’s a different thing, different kind of film, even different period in time so I haven’t read his previous work.” On one hand, that’s kind of disappointing, I would have loved to have seen what a major director like Aronofsky envisioned for this project. On the other hand, I’m much happier about a filmmaker who is enthusiastic about his own vision taking over Robocop rather than having a utility player come in, just pick up the pieces, and do whatever the studio wants.

When the calendar page turns to October, we Rejects have only one thought: horror. To celebrate this grandest and darkest of months, we’ll cover one excellent horror film a day for the entirety of the month. That’s 31 Days of Horror and 31 Films perfect for viewing on a dark, chilly, October night. If you, like us, love horror and Halloween, give us a Hell Yeah and keep coming every day this month for a new dose of adrenaline. Synopsis: The greatest fear any woman has comes to fruition when author Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) moves to a quiet Louisiana town to complete her novel before its deadline. She took her first misstep five minutes into her supposedly pleasant stay when she brushed off the advances of the town’s young lothario Johnny (Jeff Branson) at a gas station. Johnny would not stand for this type of treatment, especially in front of his two equally twisted friends Stanley (Daniel Franzese) and Andy (Rodney Eastman). After they discover the simple-minded, puppy dog of a man Matthew (Chad Lindberg) had not only been in Jennifer’s rental home to fix a leak but also received a thank you peck, the men and the sexually twisted Sheriff Storch (Andrew Howard) take it upon themselves to terrorize the young woman until she breaks. Unfortunately for them, they had no idea of true, brutal terror.

Twice before Hollywood has told tales of scandalous men achieving vast riches by selling illegal substances in movies named Scarface. The first time was in 1932, and the substance was prohibition era booze. The second time was in 1983, and the substance was cocaine. I remember watching the 1932 Scarface in a film class way back in the days when I was a lowly university student and liking it quite a bit. I’ve always thought that the 1983 version was pretty dated and indulgent though. Even with its cult status among rappers and people who like to watch Entourage. So how do I feel about THR’s news that Universal is looking to produce yet another version of Scarface, this one set in modern times? I guess I’m pretty indifferent about it. The story of a tragic figure experiencing a rise and fall in the crime world is one that has been told a thousand times already, and it will be told a thousand times again, so what’s the big deal if they want to sell another one by calling it Scarface?

News of a RoboCop remake has been bouncing around for literally years, usually with Darren Aronofsky’s name attached in some manner. Recently, the plan for the film has been that Aronofsky would serve in a producer’s role and José Padilha, helmer of 2007’s Elite Squad, would be sitting in the director’s chair. Even more recently, Dutch film site Film1 caught up with the director to have a chat about Elite Squad 2, and at the end even managed to get a quote out of him about how his approach to the material will differ from original RoboCop director Paul Verhoeven’s. Padilha’s comments were posted in some sort of indecipherable moon language, but luckily the gents over at /Film were kind enough to run it through Google translate and have some good old-fashioned English come out the other end. Padilha roughly said, “I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop, and I think that such a film is now urgently needed. But I will not repeat what Verhoeven has done so clearly and strongly. Instead I try to make a film that will address topics that Verhoeven untreated. If you are a man changes into a robot, how do you do that? What is the difference between humans and robots developed? What is free will? What does it mean to lose your free will? Those are the issues that I think.” That’s kind of vague, but I guess what Padilha is getting at is that his version of RoboCop will focus [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]