The Week In Geek Remakes Galore: Carrie Dark Shadows The Flinstones & It Sucks To Be Arnold.
Stephen King’s Classic Carrie To Be The Latest Shitty Remake
*Sigh* Let’s add yet another chapter to the endless list of crappy remakes of horror classics. Because the re-launches of Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween and all those others did so well and captured the imaginations of America, MGM and Screen Gems are now looking to remake Stephen King’s classic Carrie for modern audiences. Now, I’m not against putting new spins to classic novels, but when you hit a home run and knock it out of the park the way Brian De Palma did with the original 1976 version, why bother trying again? You’ll never find a better Carrie White than Sissy Spacek, or a better Margaret White than Piper Laurie. They already did a made for tv remake a few years ago and it failed to be memorable in any real way. And even for the whole generation of Millennials that haven’t seen the original, they’ve at least heard about it or seen enough parodies to know the big twist at the end, so just like with Psycho, doing a remake is all but pointless. Supposedly this new version will be “closer to the novel”, but aside from the novel’s framing device of a police deposition given by the survivors of Carrie’s Prom Night massacre, the book and the movie are nearly identical. I’ll admit that Carrie is a personal favorite of mine, very close to my black little heart, so I’m taking this one a wee bit harder than usual.
MGM has hired play write Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to write a draft for the movie, after he recently did a huge re-write on that ever plagued Spider-Man musical. Apparently, he was brought in to make the show more like the comics (he has also written numerous comics for Marvel, including Fantastic Four, a Nightcrawler mini-series and Spider-Man) and has seemingly succeeded. Whatever he did must have gotten some positive feedback, because soon after he was tapped by MGM to re-do Carrie, and now he has also been brought onto the writing staff for the third season of Glee. While the Carrie news irritates me to no end, I’m glad Glee is getting some fresh blood in the writer’s room for the third season. Up until now, there have essentially only been three writers on staff, and the show desperately needs new blood. The first half of season two was a clusterfuck of bad “tribute” episodes, and even though the show really improved with the second half of this season, the damage was done amongst casual fans of the show. Actually, I hope he just sticks to Glee and he gets paid enough doing that job to leave Carrie well the fuck alone.
Seth Macfarlane Revives The Flintstones. Really.
In the Wtf? news item of the week, Fox studios has announced that Seth Macfarlane, the adorably smug animation guru behind Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show is gearing up for a remake of Hanna Barbera’s The Flintstones. Macfarlane has said he’s a huge fan of the original show and has been trying for years to do his own version. Apparently, getting all his ducks in a row for this remake was not easy, as the Hanna-Barbera library is now owned by Warner Brothers, and therefore Fox didn’t initially have control of this property. But I guess money talks, because this week all the stars aligned for everyone involved and soon you’ll be hearing Yabba-Dabba-Doo on prime time again.
The real question here is how on Earth will Macfarlane’s sense of humor translate to the squeaky clean (and frankly, lame) humor of the Flintstones? Remember, Flintstones brand still sells everything from vitamins to cereal, how much will parent company and copyright holders Warners let him get away with here? Can Seth Macfarlane even do humor that isn’t insulting to someone, somewhere, or filled with pop culture references? The show is set to launch on the Fox network (where else?) in 2013, and they have so much confidence in their Macfarlane money printing machine that they’ve also already commissioned him to start working on a Flintstones movie as well. If Pebbles is suddenly a trash talking baby that only Dino understands though, I’m out.
Dark Shadows Starts Filming for May 11th 2012 Debut
And in yet even more remake/reboot/reshash news, it was announced this week that principal photography has begun on Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows movie, starring Johnny Depp (of course) based on the campy afternoon soap opera. Here is part of the press release:
In the year 1752, Joshua and Naomi Collins, with young son Barnabas, set sail from Liverpool, England to start a new life in America. But even an ocean was not enough to escape the mysterious curse that has plagued their family. Two decades pass and Barnabas (Johnny Depp) has the world at his feet—or at least the town of Collinsport, Maine. The master of Collinwood Manor, Barnabas is rich, powerful and an inveterate playboy…until he makes the grave mistake of breaking the heart of Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green). A witch, in every sense of the word, Angelique dooms him to a fate worse than death: turning him into a vampire, and then burying him alive.
Two centuries later, Barnabas is inadvertently freed from his tomb and emerges into the very changed world of 1972. He returns to Collinwood Manor to find that his once-grand estate has fallen into ruin. The dysfunctional remnants of the Collins family have fared little better, each harboring their own dark secrets. Matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Michelle Pfeiffer) has called upon live-in psychiatrist, Dr. Julia Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter), to help with her family troubles
Totally against my better judgement, I gotta admit I am way excited for this. The idea of Burton doing a campy vampire flick set in the early 70’s is too much for me to resist, despite the fact that Sweeney Todd aside, I’ve been disappointed with everything Burton has done for the past decade. On paper, this doesn’t sound like it will be any better, but I hope this one is more Sleepy Hollow and less Alice in Wonderland.
Will You Be Able to Buy Action Comics #1 This September? Maybe…
In comic book news this week, the big rumor going around is that after DC’s Flashpoint mini series wraps in August, the entire DC Universe line of comics will re-launch with brand new #1 issues, giving fans an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the whole dang universe. So for those of you who always wanted a copy of Action Comics #1 or Batman #1, this might be your chance. These rumors are supported by the fact in August, according to solicitations released this week, all story lines in just about every single DCU title are coming to their conclusions at seemingly the exact same time. Add to that the fact that DC is only releasing one comic during the final week of August, the final issue of Flashpoint, after which “everything changes”.
Now, before anyone freaks out too much, it is highly doubtful that just because we are getting new first issue launches that we are getting some giant continuity overhaul. More likely is that after the whole Flashpoint continuity is set straight, the regular DC Universe will return…but with certain tweeks. There are already too many books that DC has announced as coming soon (Batwoman, Justice League International) to suggest that there is going to be a total continuity reboot. This sounds a bit like DC’s “One Year Later” gimmick they pulled after Infinite Crisis, but we can only hope done better. I imagine that next month, when solicitations are released for DC’s September titles, there will be a lot of blacked out images and “Classified” creators listed, essentially telling us all nothing, giving DC something to make a big deal about come Comic Con time in San Diego this July
Arnold’s Hollywood Comeback Put On Hold
It seems like just a few weeks ago, the internet was all abuzz with news about all these different projects that Arnold Schwarzenegger was going to do in Hollywood now that his stint in public office was over. Well, if you were looking forward to Terminator 5 or The Governator cartoon (really, was anyone looking forward to that?) prepare to be disappointed. In light of ol’ Arnie’s reveal this week about fathering a child with “the help”, he has pulled out of any and all Hollywood projects he was attached to. Considering how quickly Tiger Woods career recovered, I wouldn’t worry too much if I were Arnold. It isn’t like he threatened to bury Maria Shriver in the rose garden or something. In a year no one will care or remember any of this Arnie, so don’t sweat it. Look how fast Mel Gibson got a movie in theaters again.
