To the shock of God and everybody, Michael Bay and company will not be bringing up "Rosemary's Baby." Plans for a rebirth reconceptualization remake of Roman Polanski's 1968 horror masterwork, based on Ira Levin's best-selling novel in which the bambino of Beelzebub receives evil prenatal care at the Dakota building at 72nd and Central Park West, have been abandoned because the producers couldn't conceive a way to make it viable for today's post-Cheney audiences. Taking a break from their elocution lessons in Wasilla, Brad Fuller of Bay's Platinum Dunes company tells Collider.com:
"Rosemary's Baby" was announced and it's like a little bit like we're taking about with Freddy [Kreuger]. We went down that road and we even talked to the best writers in town and it feels like it might not be do-able. We couldn't come up with something where it felt like it was relevant and we could add something to it other than what it was so we're now not going to be doing that film.
Instead, the remakers of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Amityville Horror" and "The Hitcher" are proceeding with their remakes of "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Friday the 13th" and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds."
God, whose 1966 TIME magazine cover story made a cameo appearance as an old doctor's office copy in Polanski's film, was not available for comment.
The studios are always going to be searching for the next "classic" horror film or franchise to remake, simply because they're not terribly expensive to produce (under $30 million, in many cases), and they turn a tidy profit in theaters and on DVD. And if it's not that, they'll take a foreign language horror flick and do the same. I think most of us can agree that the likelihood of the American remake of Let The Right One In retaining that film's artfulness and subtlety isn't great.
The only one that makes me nervous, though, is that remake of "The Birds". It's certainly not amongst my favourite Hitchcock films, but if it's a commercial success, I could see more Hitch remakes along the lines of Gus Van Sant's terribly unnecessary "Psycho" coming down the pipeline. Yikes.
Whoa! That's a relief! Now if Frank Miller goes through with his "darker" version of Buck Rogers, as announced this week then once again, there is no God.
"and we could add something to it other than what it was"
While I congratulate Platinum Dunes for being wise enough to know when not to add material for the sake of adding material (at least in this particular case), this quote still greatly disturbs me.
Anyone else feel like lately mainstream Hollywood has opted to add explanations for trivial crap instead of exploring new grounds and/or developing THE MAIN PLOTLINE?
Take the Halloween remake for example, which decided to dedicate a sizeable chunk of the running time to show Michael's trailer trash (?!) family, Michael's school, the bully ... does any of that matter at all once the Laurie Strode storyline picks up?
Seeing young Kirk in the trailer for the new Star Trek completely killed my interest in the film. Maybe Abrams pulls it off -- it's not impossible -- but seeing the Enterprise being built on earth strikes me as cheap gimmick, a novelty, exploited for sales. I haven't seen it, and I'm trying to keep optimistic ... but that's the first thought that crosses my mind seeing stuff like that anymore.
If they remake Alien and have a scene explaining the crashed ship and the space jockey, that will be the death of my film-going life as far as mainstream Hollywood movies are concerned.
Some things are better left in shadows ... *sigh*
Taking a break from their elocution lessons in Wasilla
Coffee? Meet computer screen.
Ok, I understand remaking a decent flawed film or a terrible film, but why remake a good film? Have you become so stupified that we no longer understand the long lost arts of nuance, irony, subtext, and tact?
Remakes aren't always bad. For one thing, some stories work very well when transplanted to a different setting. Leone's spaghetti westerns didn't improve on Kurosawa's samurai movies, but they helped create a new genre, and were damn entertaining. Same, to a lesser extent, with some of the Hollywood musical remakes of older rom-coms (I'm thinking the likable High Society vs. the hilarious The Philadelphia Story--again, a step down, but not entirely useless). And I liked Jackson's King Kong. You can tell that he thought seriously about what was missing in the original emotionally and narratively--the original is, I think, an important movie historically and a fun monster movie, but is incomplete in its Beauty and the Beast evocations. Of course Jackson probably overfilled it, but....
That said, remaking Polanski or Hitchcock seems a fool's errand.
On the other hand, it's possible someone could make a good movie remake of Friday the 13th. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a movie that made sense of the 13th franchise's bizarre appeal while actually making a good movie? (Friday the 13th scared me a lot when I was a kid--maybe it wasn't hard to when I was that age.)
Remakes aren't always bad. For one thing, some stories work very well when transplanted to a different setting. Leone's spaghetti westerns didn't improve on Kurosawa's samurai movies, but they helped create a new genre, and were damn entertaining. Same, to a lesser extent, with some of the Hollywood musical remakes of older rom-coms (I'm thinking the likable High Society vs. the hilarious The Philadelphia Story--again, a step down, but not entirely useless). And I liked Jackson's King Kong. You can tell that he thought seriously about what was missing in the original emotionally and narratively--the original is, I think, an important movie historically and a fun monster movie, but is incomplete in its Beauty and the Beast evocations. Of course Jackson probably overfilled it, but....
That said, remaking Polanski or Hitchcock seems a fool's errand.
On the other hand, it's possible someone could make a good movie remake of Friday the 13th. Wouldn't it be interesting to see a movie that made sense of the 13th franchise's bizarre appeal while actually making a good movie? (Friday the 13th scared me a lot when I was a kid--maybe it wasn't hard to when I was that age.)
JE: I have nothing against remakes. "Birth," for example, is a great "remake" of "Un Chien Andalou." "The Brood" is a brilliant homage to "Don't Look Now." It's the literalism I object to.
Don't forget Carpenter's THE THING; light-years better than the original.
JE: Different. Not better, in my opinion. I like both versions.
William B,
Oh, I agree. There is plenty of precedent for good remakes. To your list, I'd like to add Herzog's "Nosferatu", and let's not forget Sir Hitchcock, himself, remade one of his own movies -- "the Man Who Knew Too Much" (the original, I have yet to see but it's on my Netlfix queue.)
And I'm looking forward to the new Friday the 13th because I think it would be hilarious if the dreaded and vile remake put the other ten films to shame (which shouldn't be too terribly hard.)
As for Jimbo's comments on The Thing, I notice whenever remake discussions come up people are typically polarized and most people tend to side with Carpenter's remake. I find it disheartening so many people can't appreciate two different films.
I do like Carpenter's remake, but the original blew me away. Few filmmakers can handle that many characters in frame at a time. Most filmmakers' movies grind to a halt with expository dialogue, but The Thing From Another World managed to gain momentum when the characters started talking. Very rarely has a film had me in awe at spoken exchanges.
I appreciate that John Carpenter made a different film -- one that's closer to the original "Who Goes There" story. Rob Botin (and Stan Winston's) effects are a delight to watch.
But, oh well. I happily own both.
The remakes that irritate me the most at the moment are the Americanized versions of Japanese horror films. What's the point of such a literal remake? At least when Sergio Leone made Fistful of Dollars, he changed genres, settings, characters, and swapped swords for guns.
"It's the literalism I object to."
I was wondering if you could elaborate what you mean by literalism. I get the impression you're referring to things along the lines of Psycho (98) being shot by shot photocopy. Am I mistaken?
The best horror remake ever, as well as one of the best remakes period, is hands down David Cronenberg's The Fly.
Maybe I'm completely retarded and should be locked away in an asylum, but shouldn't we not remake any of those movies?
However, I had conceived in my head a sequel to Rosemary's Baby subtitled Rosemary's Revenge. There would be a certain amount of respect afforded for Polanski's movie, but this non-canon sequel would embrace farce and make no pretense of being meant to be taken seriously. It would feature a lot of motorcycle rides that didn't involve any kind of travel from one place to another. There would be high-octane fight scenes. Lots of blood.
I'm not religious, but the idea of Michael Bay even being associated with something Roman Polanski made brings to mind words such as sacrilege.
Somehow the trademark Bay & Bruckheimer golden-hued, slow-mo walks into the sunset over some top 40 hair ballad doesn't strike me as setting the right tone for Rosemary's Baby.
Now that they've- ahem- aborted the remake, maybe I'll reconsider my views on divine intervention.
Rosemary's Baby can certainly be updated to today's standards. The quick solution of abortion would come to mind, and what consequences would that lead to, if one were to abort the offspring of Satan?
Now, this leads to more philosophical problems, which Michael Bay's horror films do not do. They go for a visceral feel. Notice movies like The Fly, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers all work because they have more to think about then just the scares. The Invasion, the latest Body Snatcher remake, skipped that, and instead tried to go for instant scares, and action scenes. It felt rushed, predictable, and was pretty horrible.
Rosemary's Baby could certainly work, but not in the hands of those filmmakers.
I hope the Let The Right One In does not fall into those hands either.
Raymond,
How did your lawsuit against the makers of "Look What's Happened to Rosemary's Baby" come out? I'm sure you would have made it memorable. All I remember of the plagiarized version is the motorcycle rides that didn't involve travel from one place to another. Oh, and Elaine Benis's therapist/boyfriend Stephen McHattie as Satan, Jr.
This may be the first time in the history of Hollywood that a potentially profitable remake was not made because the producers thought it might not be good. Maybe it's because it's not based on a comic book and they couldn't see how to make money off the action figures and Burger King promotions.
Man I hope they forget about doing a Birds remake. The only guy that can remake a Hitchcock movie is Alfred Hitchcock, and he's dead. I suspect that Rear Window remake with Christopher Reeve did him in.