It’s unclear why this is a red-band trailer. Maybe because it’s adequately startling? Or a bit gruesome without splattering blood everywhere? Or maybe because no one curses or gets naked? Either way, even though The Thing is a remake prequel with the same name as its originator featuring roughly the same plot, the strength of this piece of marketing is the fabulous creature design done as a group effort by Amalgamated Dynamics, The Aaron Sims Company and several others. From the design to the execution, it looks appropriately slimy and scary. Check it out for yourself, and watch out for that co-worker with the eye twitch.

Writer-director Rod Lurie was in a bit of a lose-lose situation when it came to dealing with the hardcore Straw Dogs fans. Like all remakes, if Lurie deviated too much, many critics would ask, “Why call it Straw Dogs?” If the Nothing But the Truth director stayed too faithful, then he’d get ripped on for making a carbon copy. There’s a tough middle ground between those two sides, and Lurie made enough changes to try to find it. For one thing, unlike Sam Peckinpah, Rod Lurie doesn’t hate women. All jokes aside, the original film earned controversy, partly because Peckinpah’s depiction of his female lead was deemed misogynistic. That’s not much of a surprise — Peckinpah treated that character with such disgust, as he treated all the main characters in that film with disgust. His film was about David (played in this version by James Marsden) finding his inner animal, while Lurie opted for David finding his inner man. Here’s what Rod Lurie had to say about the commercial potential of a Straw Dogs remake, the fine line between David being manly and narcissistic, and Peckinpah’s depiction of Amy versus his own: Note: this interview contains spoilers.

Argentinean director Juan José Campanella’s 2009 release The Secret in Their Eyes was a well-liked movie. It even won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Despite all of its accomplishments though, it had two fatal flaws at its center: it wasn’t in English and it didn’t have any big Hollywood stars. What were they thinking? Luckily those wrongs are now set to be righted, as Breach director Billy Ray is putting together an English-language remake for all of us to properly enjoy. That’s one of the big flaws taken care of, but what about the other? Twitch is reporting that Ray will be taking care of that problem as well, as the production has sent an offer to Denzel Washington to star. If he accepts, he will be taking over the role of a former legal counselor who sets out to write a book about a brutal murder/death/kill rape that happened earlier in his career and never got resolved. After that some hard-boiled detective stuff takes place. There are girls, mysterious guys in photos, and the matter of drunken partners to deal with. No word yet on who is going to play the girls or the drunken partner in this remake, but if Denzel accepts his offer I would imagine a mad dash to get cast alongside him will start taking place. Finally, The Secret in Their Eyes will get its chance at being a perfect film.

Twenty-five years after its initial release, David Cronenberg’s The Fly is thought to be a modern classic, a highly effective mixture of science, romance, and terror that pulled in a much greater audience than the horror fans looking for a cheap thrill. Cronenberg has always been a director poised on horror as a higher art, a filmmaker who understands the grotesque and how much it is apparent in real life. Some, myself included, call The Fly his master work, and Cronenberg, a very intelligent speaker about all things, not just his own work, has much to offer the viewers of his film and the listeners of the commentary he provides that film. So here, without any further ado or buzz or flitting around your head or what have you, the things we learned from David Cronenberg’s commentary on The Fly.

For a second, let’s pretend that a remake of the ultra-violence-infused, sex-brimming anime Kite is actually going to happen. It’s been a long road with Javier and Jorge Aguilera, then Rob Cohen trying to get the project off the ground, but now Variety is reporting that Snakes on a Plane and Shark Night 3D director David R. Ellis is going to take over. Let’s assume that everything goes smoothly and that a movie comes out the other end. What is that going to look like exactly? The original is rightfully notorious for trying its hardest to be pornography featuring an underaged female character, and a live-action remake seems like it would come up against a lot of challenges that might leave core elements decorating the cutting room floor. That won’t make it the first Remake-In-Name-Only, but it will still be fascinating to see whether Distant Horizon and Ellis will produce something deviant and challenging, whether it will be a lukewarm version of Hanna by way of Lolita, or whether it will get made at all.

Quirky, controversial director Takashi Miike’s latest film Ninja Kids!!! has been released in his home country of Japan for about two months now, so you know what that means…it’s time to start talking about the English-language remake! THR is reporting that a prominent studio is currently in talks to bring the property overseas and put it in a nice, neat Hollywood package that we can all consume without having to read nasty subtitles or hurt our heads trying to understand cultural specific conceits. Personally I have not seen Ninja Kids!!!, and seeing as it is so new, probably a lot of other people haven’t either. So before we decide if we’re excited for this remake or not, let’s take a look at what exactly the movie is.

I’ve reported on the Thin Man remake that Johnny Depp is attached to star in a couple times before. First, there was the news that “Permanent Midnight” author Jerry Stahl would be writing the new screenplay for the film. Then there was word that past Depp collaborator Rob Marshall would be stepping in to direct. A new round of updates on the development of this project seem to confirm that, yes, Marshall is still attached to sit in the director’s chair. However, it seems that Stahl never actually did any writing for the film, so the suits have gotten a new guy to start a script from scratch. According to Deadline Rockland, veteran screenwriter David Koepp has now been charged with the duty of updating the exploits of married P.I. team Nick and Nora Charles. Koepp’s name doesn’t really tell me much about what to expect from this movie. He’s responsible for completely acceptable literary adaptations like Jurassic Park, but he’s also responsible for completely unacceptable literary adaptations like Angels & Demons. I guess his involvement is going to be a bit of a crapshoot.

In 2003, director Park Chan-wook made his presence in the film world felt by crafting Oldboy, a revenge film about a guy who is mysteriously imprisoned in a shabby room for fifteen years and then is one day released and given a limited amount of time to find and take vengeance on his captor. It rose above the legions of other rank and file revenge films through superior crafting and a great lead performance by Min-sik Choi. It was good, everyone liked it, and people were happy. Flash forward to recent months, and now there’s news that Spike Lee is going to direct a movie called Oldboy, a revenge film about a man who gets locked in a shabby room for fifteen years and is then one day released and given a limited amount of time to find and take vengeance on his captor. We don’t know if it’s going to be any good, everyone is mad that something else they like is being remade, and no one is happy. Well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. Maybe some people are happy. And maybe I could be coming around on this project as well, because at the very least Lee has just found a great actor to play whatever his version of the Oldboy protagonist will be called. It’s been a rumor for a while that Josh Brolin was at the top of the wish list to star in this film, and now Deadline Ami-dong confirms that those rumors were most likely [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]

It’s been hyped up, hotly anticipated and pushed hard by the big name behind it, but at the end of the day Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is just not that scary. Sure, Troy Nixey’s haunted house movie — co-produced and co-scripted by Guillermo Del Toro — has the high end bonafides, revealed in the sumptuous wood-paneled mansion setting and the patient, operatic camera movements. It’s got the eerie historical aura, the tortured child and the expressionistic rendition of shadowy figures creeping through the darkness. But when this remake of a popular made-for-TV movie from 1973 finally shows all its cards, you wonder what you’ve missed. There’s a serious disconnect between the highfalutin atmospherics and the nitty- gritty sloppiness of the premise, a sort of People Under the Stairs for rich white New Englanders. Reliant on the timeless “boo” effect and the hint of something deeper and sinister, the film basically offers one long, drawn out exercise in scaring the pants off a pre-teen.

Look, Shawn Levy directed Night at the Museum. He’s a busy guy and he doesn’t have time to be jerked around. That’s why two movie news stories that have come out recently have it looking like he could be done with the long gestating but still not accomplished Fantastic Voyage remake that James Cameron’s company is producing along with Fox. THR recently reported that there is a sticking point between Levy and the producers, where he believes that the film needs an A-list actor to star and he doesn’t want to go forward without getting one signed. For their part, the producers seem less concerned and just want to make the material. Apparently Levy has had recent meetings with Will Smith and if Smith bites the hook and agrees to make the movie it could still be on, but if not, Levy is likely to leave for other projects. Enter a report from Deadline Andermatt that Fox also has a Frankenstein project brewing, with a script written by John Landis’s son Max, that they want to rush into production. Why do they want to rush it into production? Because pretty much everybody has a project in the works about Frankenstein coming to life and beating people to death with his big cold meat paws, so they want to be at the front of the pack when they start hitting theaters. Apparently they want Levy to helm the thing, so if Cameron and crew don’t want to lose him to a [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]

I am likely one of very few critics that sat down to watch Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night having not seen Tom Holland’s 1985 original first, but upon doing so after, feel I’ve unintentionally done myself a great service. Now that I’ve seen it, the original is a great film; Chris Sarandon’s Jerry Dandrige and Roddy McDowall’s Peter Vincent are uniquely them, the tone and pace a perfect example of eighties horror done right – smart and campy all at once. Like most re-makes/re-imaginings, if the original felt good and was a part of my film collage growing up, it would have colored my perception of the new offering by default. This certainly isn’t bad, but it’s not always the best way to approach something new. I am glad then that in putting the cart before the horse, I was able to appreciate and have a good bit of fun with this latest offering.

You wouldn’t expect that a movie about an Indian burial ground that brings dead pets back to life in rabid, vicious zombie form could be considered an untouchable classic, but horror fans are very protective about what they like. And Stephen King, while a horror icon on the literary shelf, has a much spottier record when it comes to film adaptations. That 1989’s Pet Sematary turned out to be one of the best King adaptations adds to its status as modern classic meant to be cherished. By now it should be clear though that nothing is sacred in Hollywood, especially horror properties. So of course a remake of Pet Sematary has been in the works for a while. The last time we heard about the project, Paramount had hired Matt Greenberg to write a script for a remake. He already had some experience adapting King work with 1408, so I guess the choice made sense. And it turns out Greenberg took Paramount’s request pretty seriously, this isn’t a goof, the man has now turned in his script. So the next step toward getting this thing off the ground is finding a director. Enter Piranha and The Hills Have Eyes director Alexandre Aja. Twitch reports that Aja is close to taking on the job. Paramount is actively pursuing him, and while Aja has a project called Cobra: The Space Pirate he’s looking to do, that film has yet to find adequate funding, and isn’t scheduled to start shooting until 2013. A [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]

Will Smith may have passed on Django Unchained, but he’s making a return to movie work nonetheless after a hiatus to build the careers of his children. This is, of course, the first step to the creation of the Smith Dynasty that will dominate filmmaking of the future – a goal that will make the “Ha ha!” etched into Will Smith’s tombstone have two meanings. His next goal is to let his daughter Willow whip her hair as Annie in a remake of the little, curly-haired adventure through poverty and extreme wealth. Now, Vulture is reporting that they want Emma Thompson to write the script for the reboot. Thompsons is a solid choice because of her experience as a writer, her emotional intelligence as an actor that shines through on the page, and her ability to create fun, energetic children’s films. Vulture even, smartly, points out that there’s a drunken mess of a role in the show for Thompson (played by the genius Carol Burnett in the 1982 film). The film will be updated of course, and it’ll most likely feature music from Jay-Z (who is also producing). There’s also something to be said about a character that’s been extremely Caucasian for decades being acted by a black actress in what will most likely be a movie aimed at a large, mainstream audience, but it’s for people smarter than I am who have real opinions about it. It seems culturally significant, but I have no idea why. Regardless, Thompson would [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 recent revelation that Chris Columbus will be producing a US-based, English-language remake of Troll Hunter was met with everything from mild irritation to outright derision. A typical report of the news included 1) a statement that the original is great/awesome 2) a question of whether this really needed a remake 3) a comment that Hollywood was craven and unoriginal and, for a select few pieces, 4) swear words. My own take was fairly neutral (much like my reaction to Andre Ovredal‘s film), which prompted at least half an email asking me why I was giving this one a pass after years of making up clever insults at the expense of anyone attempting a remake. After some soul-searching, it was clear that I had either made peace with the recent glut of remakes or been beaten into submission by it. Either way, I’m tired of complaining about remakes, and here’s why.

“You know, I don’t know if it really makes sense to call it Commando. Maybe it does or maybe doesn’t. It is the reboot of it and all of that stuff.” That’s producer John Davis, inspiring confidence that he knows what he’s talking about since 2011. The producer revealed to Collider that he’d been working on a remake of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring action flick that let us all blow off a little steam. Harsh Times writer/director David Ayer has written the script and may direct the film himself, but it’s unclear (thanks to Davis) how closely it will follow the original. “Bad guy steals girl and is pursued by guy who won’t die” is a bit too high concept to speculate on when it comes to remake territory, so a ton of the work will fall on Ayer’s script. The bigger question is whether a faithful remake will make sense in a world of more realistic action films. That modifier should be taken with a grain of salt considering a movie came out last year where a tank was dropped out of a plane, but Commando featured a literal one-man army killing thousands without getting scratched. It also had more one-liners per cubic foot than any other action movie. Can Ayer top that record? Remember when they promised to remake Commando last?

Apparently Universal wasn’t too pleased with the results of their new Joe Johnston directed version of The Wolfman that came out last year. That film, that starred Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins, was set to get a sequel, but now plans are changing. Movie Hole is reporting that Michael Tabb’s script for a sequel is getting reworked into a new start for the series that will be more in keeping with the original Lon Chaney starring film from 1941 that is oft heralded as being a classic. Reportedly, the title of this new film is tentatively set to be Werewolf. I probably would have gone with The Werewolfman just to keep that lack of brevity thing Rise of the Planet of the Apes started going.

Despite the fact that their plates are pretty full already, director Patrick Lussier and his co-writer Todd Farmer are chomping at the bit to get the opportunity to make Halloween 3. In a chat with MTV, the duo have said that once their insane dive into 3D with Nic Cage, Drive Angry 3D, gets it’s home release, and they get through work on a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, a continuation of the new Halloween franchise that director Rob Zombie started is next on their wish list. “We would love it to go through,” Lussier said. “We would make that the second somebody said, ‘Yes, go make it,’ because it’s a script that we love and a script we’re really passionate about and it’s an amazing character and an incredible franchise, and it would just be a great experience for us to go back to the roots.”

Well, this is the most head-explodingly film nerdy news I’ve heard in a while. Weirdo Danish director Lars Von Trier is planning on doing another take on The Five Obstructions, and this time the subject of his torture is going to be film legend Martin Scorsese. For those that don’t know, The Five Obstructions was a 2003 film project in which Von Trier challenged filmmaker Jorgen Leth to remake his 1967 short film The Perfect Human five times, each time with a different constrictive rule (or obstruction) in place. Even for a guy who made something like Antichrist, this is a pretty weird idea, but it turned out to be hugely interesting. It used obstructions like the remake must be an animation, or it must contain no shots longer than 12 frames, or it must be made in the most miserable place in the world. It’s hard to explain how things developed without seeing it for yourself, maybe you should just go ahead and watch the original on Netflix to get up to speed.

The remake that nobody asked for of the Paul Verhoeven action classic Total Recall has a secret. Is it a long hidden alien reactor that can supply Mars with enough oxygen for everyone to breathe? Is it a surprise cameo by the original film’s star Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, it’s neither of those things: at all. As a matter of fact, this new version of the story isn’t going to take place on Mars, it’s set in the future countries Euromerica and New Shanghai. There is a super secret cameo that’s going to take place in the movie though. Are you ready for it?

A remake of the classic detective story following the exploits of married couple Nick and Nora Charles has been in the works for a while with Johnny Depp attached to star as Nick Charles and Jerry Stahl on board to write the script. Rumor had it that Depp’s director on the upcoming fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film On Stranger Tides was thinking about signing on to this project as well, and now a press release from Warner Bros. has made it official. The Thin Man was first a novel written by Dashiell Hammett, then it was a film directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and now it will be remake by Rob Marshall. Marshall says of the project, “John [DeLuca] and I are overjoyed at the idea of working with Johnny again, especially on such a classy and classic project. We are also thrilled to be partnering this time with such wonderful producers as Christi Dembroski and Kevin McCormick, and we are looking forward to working with Warner Bros. to create a reinvention of a beloved story.”