There are so many reboots coming out at the moment that it can be tough to keep track of them all. Our culture is currently bursting at the seams with remakes and reboots. Part of it is that the studios will not take a chance on new material and are too afraid to try anything original. Another part of that is on us. In the rare instances where a major studio takes a chance and makes an original movie that hits theaters nationwide, nobody goes to see it because they’re not already familiar with the title or with whatever the feature is about. It reinforces the studio’s viewpoint that nothing outside of a remake will work, and so we continue to get more of them same and whine about it, even though we’re part of the problem.
Still, remakes are not terrible by default. A good film is a good film. Taking a story and reworking it for new audiences, or simply putting your own stamp on the material can be an incredible challenge for a writer.
It’s not like there aren’t good remakes, despite how often you hear that argument. There are plenty, and many of them were not eagerly anticipated by fans of the original when they were first announced. Whether that means anything for these upcoming reboots is hard to say, but it is something to keep in mind. Keep reading for remakes to look out for in the near future.
The Crow
It’s tough to get excited for The Crow after the sheer amount of people who have left the project. Then there’s the fact that to retread that story would kind of be to disgrace the memory of original Crow actor Brandon Lee. Still, this one is pushing ahead despite everyone’s better judgment.
Pet Sematary is at least coming from director Juan Carlos Frednadillo who helmed the underrated follow up 28 Weeks Later. That’s one reason to be somewhat hopeful as to how the movie will turn out, if a reason is needed. Still, this is a really hard remake to justify considering how closely the original stuck to the source material.
The Birds
There’s not a whole lot of excitement for the remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. It’s one of the most revered horror movies of all time. But for a lot of younger viewers, the special effects don’t hold up. A remake would also provide the opportunity to switch things up by taking the story and applying it to the original, dreary England landscape of the original short story by Daphne Du Maurier.
Death Note
Anime being adapted into live-action American films doesn’t have a great track record. Add onto that the fact that it was only announced a week or so ago that this would even be rated R. That doesn’t show a lot of confidence in the need to make this project what it really needs to be to please fans of the original, or just fans of the story in general.
The Entity
This is a remake I can definitely get behind. It’s so good I had to check multiple sources to confirm it was real, because it does almost sound too good to be true. Here you have an interesting haunted house movie that’s not as well known, that goes to some extremely dark directions. And then you have one of the best directors working in horror today, James Wan, taking the helm. Plus, he brought his Conjuring writers Chad and Carey Hayes with him for good measure.
It
After Cary Fukunaga left the remake he was so passionate about, weeks before shooting was slated to begin, a lot of people were reasonably skeptical as to the direction this was going to go. Andres Muschietti has now boarded the ship as the new director of the upcoming reboot, which is scheduled to begin shooting sooner rather than later, although a specific date is not yet known. Rumors persist that Fukunaga left over budgetary issues, feeling that It could not be done for the amount of money the studio wanted to allocate.
