Movies
I Shudder at the Thought of THIS ‘Videodrome’ Remake
I’m all for remakes, I really am, but if you’re going to do it, can you at least take it seriously? While Ehren Kruger stumbled his way into the writing job of The Ring remake (a film turned into a gem by director Gore Verbinski) and slightly entertained me with The Skeleton Key, his credentials don’t make me smile, especially after the painstaking garbage that was Blood and Chocolate (oh jeez, don’t remind me). Now the genre vet is putting his fingers all over one of my all-time favorite movies, David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. I won’t be eating that anymore.
Universal Pictures will remake the 1983 David Cronenberg-directed thriller “Videodrome,” with Ehren Kruger set to write the script and produce with partner Daniel Bobker.
The producers tracked down the rights to Canadian distribution vet Rene Malo, who will be exec producer. Universal distributed the original and had first refusal on a remake, and the studio snapped up the opportunity.
The original “Videodrome” starred James Woods as the head of Civic TV Channel 83, who makes his station relevant by programming “Videodrome,” a series that depicts torture and murder that transfixes viewers.
The new picture will modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.
Cronenberg has no role in the film as yet. He is prepping for MGM “The Matarese Circle” as a starring vehicle for Tom Cruise and Denzel Washington. Since Cruise appears likely to next star in the DreamWorks drama “Motorcade” and Washington has committed to the Fox drama “Unstoppable,” “Circle” doesn’t appear likely to get under way until later this year or 2010.
Bobker/Kruger Films recently set the thriller “Dream House” at Morgan Creek and is producing, with Matthew Stillman, “The Keep” for Rogue. Kruger co-wrote the June 24 Paramount/DreamWorks release “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.
The trailer for Ti West’s upcoming adaptation of A Christmas Carol raised a lot of eyebrows when it dropped earlier this week. While plenty of folks initially dismissed Ebenezer as a derivative project meant to cash in on the recent wave of unnecessary prequels that expand the backstory of beloved characters (such as 2023’s Wonka), Charles Dickens’ original novel already made a point of exploring Ebenezer Scrooge’s origins in detail – meaning that this new film is likely just a particularly faithful adaptation of the source material under a different name.
Couple that with the fact that the movie is being helmed by a genuine horror auteur and I think it’s safe to say that the latest iteration of the first modern ghost story is in good hands.
That being said, one detail that immediately jumped out at me during the brief teaser (other than a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to Johnny Depp’s iconic bedroom death scene from the original A Nightmare on Elm Street) is the fact that many of Ebenezer’s ghosts appear to have been directly lifted from the iconic John Leech illustrations that accompanied the first edition of Dickens’ novel.
Here are a couple of stills from the trailer compared to the original artwork:
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
The Phantoms in ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Ebenezer’
Marley’s Ghost in ‘Ebenezer’ and ‘A Christmas Carol’
Mainly working with old-school wood and steel engravings that would later be transferred to print, Leech was instrumental in crafting the iconic look of history’s most influential phantoms – especially since Dickens is said to have been deeply involved with the creation of these so-called “comic illustrations.”
And since the novel is commonly said to have popularized spiritualism in Victorian England, much of the ghostly iconography that we still see in genre media to this very day (including some of Ti West’s previous films) can be traced back to the author’s partnership with Leech.
Ebenezer won’t be the first A Christmas Carol adaptation to borrow heavily from these designs, but I can appreciate how Ti West is incorporating an important part of horror history into his latest film.
Ebenezer will be available in theaters starting November 13.
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