oh brother

Dark Horizons (from Screen Daily) reports:

Atmosphere Entertainment and Relativity Media have announced that the first picture to go into production for their joint venture genre label Chiller Films will be a remake of Joe Dante's 1978 horror hit "Piranha"

"We felt that Piranha is the perfect genre picture for us to do," Atmosphere chief Mark Canton said in a statement. "It's a classic horror thriller with high-end talent attached and with all of the ingredients to deliver a plethora of scares."

"I first had the idea to remake Piranha about three years ago, right before the current horror film resurgence," IPW chairman Marc Toberoff added. "That one word tells a story evoking universal fear. I've always felt that death by piranha was much more horrifying than death by shark."

Basically what they are saying is that they had the idea to remake a movie before anyone else started making remakes... Only problem is that they haven't even put their original idea of "remaking" into production and by the time this comes out it will probably be the last an with any luck when this film rolls into theaters even the stupid people in this country will be screaming for originality.

Whatever.

add this guy to my list

CNN.COM quoted The Amityville Horror remake director Andrew Douglas as he waxed philosophic regarding the high number of horror film releases this summer.

"This film comes out amid a whole raft of films. It is interesting what causes that," he said. "Do we get the culture we deserve, or do some people smarter than us give us the culture we want? It's a perennial question."

But his true genius was revealed when he went onto to explain why horror films are cheaper

Mr. Douglas notes that horror flicks are fantasies, and they deliver a higher jolt of fantasy than people get in real life.

He cited a couple of general rules for Hollywood's eagerness to make them. Generally speaking, they are less expensive because they use fewer stars, and they are easier to market due to their loyal fan base.

Although I do not completely disagree with Mr. Douglas (who is currently vying for position of "Unterhack with Uwe Boll) I feel he forgot to mention the most important reasons films like his are so cheap:

A lot of these films are not original ideas (i.e. remakes and re-imaginings--a word that makes my blood boil) so they don't really have to spend a lot of money on a script or rewrites. They can cut and paste a couple of horror classics together run it through Google language tools and then smooth everything out with MS Word spell-check, grammar correction, and thesaurus. You can bang out a script like this in a matter of days.

Since the title of your movie (in his case The Amityville Horror) already exists in the realm of popular culture along with the mythology and urban legends it encompasses, you save on a shit load of advertising because the studio can bank on the name recognition.

Americans are a bunch of dumb sheep so there’s a good chance some of them are going to pay to see the movie anyway. The Amityville Horror wasn't screened for critics so some sheep who might have been turned off to the film by a bad review lost somewhere between eight and ten bucks plus whatever they consumed in soda, popcorn, and jujubees. This is where you make your money back… the sheep.

Last but not least, after you have assembled a cast of people you don't have to pay, bastardized someone else’s ideas to formulate your script, saved a shitload of money in your advertising budget thanks to name recognition, you have to take the most important step in making a cheap horror movie. You get some lame-ass-know-nothing-jerk-wad who will sit in the director’s chair and yell action and cut from time to time, before he sends it off to the editing room where the film really starts to suck.

Am I bitter?

God yes.

can you hear me screaming?

Anyone who reads my blog knows how much Hollywood remakes bug the living shit out of me. This morning, I am LIVID as all get out. WHY? Because the uberhack is going to destroy a truly great film.

I'm talking about The Birds, the classic by Alfred Hitchcock. This is a film so chilling and so well executed that people who haven't even seen the movie get creeped out in the proximity of birds... because they know of this movie about birds attacking people...

The Hollywood Reporter confirms that Mr. Bay's production company is negotiating to produce a remake or "new version"... If the people at Universal (who own the rights to the movie and the short story on which it was based) have any decency at all they will tell Michael Bay to go back to the hell whence he came right before they drive a wooden stake through his cold black heart.

The sad truth is that I can bitch about how blasphemous these remakes are, and what horrible films they are, and call Michael Bay the "uberhack" until yaks learn to spell, but it won't change the fact that these films are making money. Lots and lots of money.

This only strengthens my theory that people in the USA are getting stupider every day. If I wasn't so cynical, I'd say it was something in the water, but that sort of problem would have an obvious solution.

People like the uberhack simply exploit this stupidity and make millions of dollars off the dummies. Yea Capitalism! Its the American Way--the ONLY way, if you will.

A brief note - I do not mean to imply that everyone should be smart like me... I'm not that smart. I do advocate not being dumber than me. People who are dumber than me are scary and they should scare you too. There seem to be more and more of them everyday. One dies and three take its place. This is an issue that has to be dealt with. Although not on par with say literacy, health care or gay rights, I think eliminating the dumbness will put us in a better position to deal with the real problems in our country and ultimately our world.

original comments
yo bro - The sad thing is that one from the growing group of people dumber than you is actually RUNNING THIS COUNTRY! And believe me...I *am* scared!!

Tragicgrrl - They're going to re-make the birds? UGH! They cannot give the creepiness justice! Any movie can't! I have read it a zillion times, it creeps me out horrendously! Once, about my 5th re-read, (1st as an adult)I was JUST at the point where the damn birds try to divebomb him as he's trying to get back to the house & a HUGE seagull bombed & screamed past the window that was RIGHT by my elbow! I dropped my coffee cup, dropped the book & jumped about 5' back from the window, I had to call my best friend to calm down,..I get waaay too into my books! The films make me giggle.

i'm so confused

I was watching a documentary on the making of The Amityville Horror remake, where everyone involved--actors, writers, director, grips, Kraft Services personel--were touting that this was the scariest movie ever.

And every one of these quotes, coming at two minute intervals through the entire half-hour, included the words "its so scary cause its ALL true!"

I also loved this one - "frame by frame, everything you see really happened."

Or, "it's scary cause every single thing you see is REAL! It really happened!"

For those of you who don't know, this is a remake of a classic 70's horror flick of the same name. The plot breakdown of this new version (not the original, mind you) is this: a haunted house with a chilling past drives a father to insanity. Horror ensues as he tries to off his family.

At the end of the documentary, the director was saying that there were really only two things that they knew for sure. There was a murder in the house before the Lutz family moved in, and 28 days after moving in the Lutz family left the house and vowed never to return.

What?! What happened to frame by frame?! You guys said frame by frame! What about where you said everything in the movie actually happened?

How can everything else be true if those are the only "facts" you have to go from? My head is going to explode.

Please... the only thing frightening about this film is that it was produced by uberhack Michael Bay. I know for a fact that there is a special place in hell for this guy... somewhere between Kurt Bestor and the New Kids on the Block, and not far from John Hughes. Contrary to popular belief, they do not seat alphabetically in hell.

Also scary is that people will buy into the "true story" and pay cash money to see it.

Screw you guys! This is the same production house that said their remake of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story... (me screaming into pillow)

There was a time when the words "based on a true story" meant something!

This "true" story was shown years ago to be one hundred percent crap. Bottom line, if you suddenly find yourself under the crushing weight of a mortgage you can't afford, start telling people your house is haunted. Once the well oiled PR machine is in motion, just sit back and watch the dollars start rolling in.

If you want to put your money toward a good horror movie about a haunted place with a chilling past that drives a father to insanity, where horror ensues as he tries to off his family, go rent the The Shining. It's based on a true story.

Well... not really.

original comments
Yo Bro - Yeah, kinda like how 'The Passion of the Christ' is, frame by frame, faithful (pun most definitely intended) to the Bible...let alone history. (snort!)

You forgot to mention that Mel Gibson, much to his own surprise, will find himself down there in Heaven's boiler room with Bay and friends.

when is enough enough?

Producers are hoping to release yet another prequel to Silence of the Lambs next year. Behind the Mask will follow Dr. Lecter as a young lad, depicting his descent into the monster that is is today... did I say monster? Cash cow would be more appropriate.

Follow the money - The first film made 130 meellion. I personally think that was a good movie so I have no problem with that. Hannibal nabbed 165 meellion at the box office. This also happens to be the highest grossing non-Harry Potter "H" film of all time. Red Dragon (the first prequel) made 93 meellion.

Let us not forget that way back in 1986 Lecter made his silver screen debut (played by the great Brian Cox) in little movie directed by Michael Mann. It was called Manhunter and was based on the Red Dragon book by Thomas Harris and it banked less than 10 meellion at theaters, but it happens to be a better movie than anything Bret Ratner will ever make, even if he manages to channel Bergman at some point.

Back to my point, this strikes me a some serious overkill. Too much Hannibal Lecter. This will be the third film released in five years and fifth overall. Hannibal and Red Dragon were not that good. I don't care how they did at the box office, they were lame, lame, lame! Bret Ratner?! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? ARGH!

I'll admit that Dr. Lecter was one of the coolest villains ever, but this horse is d-e-a-d. If you keep beating it the PETA people are going to start screaming louder than the little lambs in Agent Starling's dreams.

I don't have the stomach for another one.

stand back! i'm going to be sick.

Paul Anderson is going to be remaking the cult classic Deathrace 2000.

"The original was so much about decimating pedestrians that the actual race was almost irrelevant, and I want to restore that. Set in 202, ours in an ultra violent, no-holds-barred race with heavily armed Escalades, Ferraris, and Aston Martins" said Anderson.

He's going to restore what to what? If anything this quote is all the proof anyone needs to understand that Paul Anderson missed the point (and yes that was the sound of your sarcasmatron overloading). Let me type that one more time Paul... "YOU MISSED THE FUCKING POINT!" If you want to remake a movie by changing what is essentially the soul of the film, then for the love of god DO NOT CALL IT A REMAKE! Perhaps Mr. Anderson would like to remake The Godfather without all that arcane mobster bullshit. Who gets that shit anyway? Mr. Anderson, do you think you could perhaps remake Platoon and leave out all the depressing "was is hell" crap? It's such a downer.

It sounds (to me at least) as though this guy really, really, REALLY wanted to make Road Warrior IV but the people holding the rights to that material won't let him near it. And God bless em for it.

In my humble opinion, Mr. Anderson should have been killed slowly and painfully after what he did with the Alien VS Predator movie. I should state that I am not bitching about the pg-13 issue (which is a whole other rant entirely) but that it was in fact a piece of shit. So much a piece of shit that I was concerned about getting some horrible disease for only watching it. Mr Anderson, you are a hack and a studio beeotch. Go fuck yourself.

The obvious truth seems to be that there will never be any truly good remakes of any film since only shitty filmmakers appear to be attracted to the process (I'm looking at you Michael Bay)... and they also apparently make Star Wars prequels. Good filmmakers have... what do you call those things? Oh yes, IDEAS.