|
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
|
Author
|
Topic: 'Lethal Weapon' and Other Remakes Warner Really Wants To Do
|
System Notices
Forum Watchdog / Soup Nazi
Posts: 215
Registered: Apr 2004
|
posted 01-20-2011 06:00 PM
'Lethal Weapon' and Other Remakes Warner Really Wants To Do
Source: Iwatchstuff.com
quote:
Not content to take the lessons learned from Cop Out and leave it, Warner Bros. is reportedly making a reboot of Lethal Weapon a high priority on their calendar of terribles. "I am not yet old enough for these events," new, younger Murtaugh will say! Additionally, the studio has revealed that it thinks remaking Sam Peckinpah's classic western, The Wild Bunch, is a good idea, and confirmed that the long in-development remakes of Westworld, The Dirty Dozen, Oh, God!, and Tarzan are all still very much things we'll unfortunately see on screens.
News of these awfuls is coming out now due to the departure of longtime exec Jessica Goodman, whose filing cabinet of invaluable ideas like "remake Lethal Weapon?" and "Tarzan again?" has just been thrown into the Warner Bros. executive cafeteria, where, the Hollywood Reports claims, "The properties will now get fresh and hungry eyes -- and talent agents are already chatting up the potential projects and listing clients they can pitch for directing or writing gigs." So how long until the writer of Wild Hogs will have a first draft of Wild Bunch?
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
|
posted 01-21-2011 02:17 PM
Back in 1931, Warner Brothers made a film called The Maltese Falcon starring Ricardo Cortez as the detective Sam Spade. The leaden acting and slow pacing makes the film hard to watch. Ten years later in 1941, they remade the film, from an almost word for word identical script, with Humphrey Bogart in the lead role. This version is a great film and deservedly a classic. Goes to show not all remakes are worse than the original.
And before anyone comments, yes, I known that Warner Brothers also remade the film in 1936 as Satan Met A Lady, but although based on the same story, it was not really a remake.
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
|
posted 01-21-2011 03:40 PM
quote: Tom Petrov
There is still enough interest among the Gibson/Glover fans to pull it off.
I doubt that.
First of all, Mike is right. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover are getting pretty old to play buddy cop action movie characters. Gibson just turned 54. Danny Glover is 64. Some actors, such as Bruce Willis, seem to still be doing well in the mid 50's age range, but the thing with Bruce Willis is he's still making lots of movies and maintained his movie star persona. Gibson and Glover haven't.
The tabloid press has had a field day covering Mel Gibson's melt downs. Some of Gibson's comments, the controversy surrounding The Passion of the Christ and perhaps his political and religious views have landed him on the bad side of power brokers in Hollywood. Any displays of anti-semiticism or fire breathing conservatism can be career suicide in Hollywood no matter who you are. That's just how it is.
Danny Glover's biggest problem with landing an action role is that he's probably just too old to pull it off convincingly. Hell, his Roger Murtaugh character was already "too old for this shit" back in 1987 and ready to retire then. A character can't make a 20 plus year run of being ready to retire. That's just silly. Glover is playing all sorts of older guy characters now anyway. He also raised some eyebrows hob-knobbing with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
I'm not in favor of Lethal Weapon being re-made. What could Hollywood do with that vehicle that hasn't already been done? The original is a classic action movie and the Riggs character will always be associated with Mel Gibson. A new version with new actors will probably be forgettable like Starsky & Hutch with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. Yawn.
Another problem is the buddy cop action movie genre is pretty worn out now. Shitty sequels to Rush Hour and lackluster movies like Cop Out have made the formula really tired.
Warner Bros. just needs to develop some other kind of cop movie instead of a re-hash of Lethal Weapon. The studio has released other successful cop movies in the past, such as Bullitt in the 1960's, Dirty Harry in the 1970's and Lethal Weapon in the 1980's. What's wrong with coming up with a new movie idea?
quote: Mike Blakesley
I don't know why people get their panties in a wad over remakes.
Lots of people are getting their panties in a wad over remakes because Hollywood has already been over-doing it with remakes for the past decade and now it seems like they're raising the remake trend to a whole new level of intensity.
While it's true Hollywood has been re-making movies since the silent film era, I can't think of any previous period in film history where as many movies have been "re-imagined" compared to what is happening today.
In the broader context, all of those remakes are sitting aside countless numbers of sequels, big screen versions of TV shows and movies based on super heroes, video games and now even board games. I don't think Hollywood's major studios have been anywhere as derivative with their movie output as they are today.
With movie versions of Battleship and Ouija board games in development I wonder how far Hollywood can go with this. The Jackass movies might set the stage for various reality TV shows to get big screen treatment. How about movie versions of infomercials? Girls Gone Wild: The Movie, Shamwow: The Movie, Snuggie: The Movie. I'm not joking. Hollywood has grown so bad with this nonsense that those shitty movie ideas actually seem viable. Slapchop: The Movie -in 3D! Maybe the Dyson vacuum cleaner guy is working on a movie deal.
When Inception was released last summer I saw news articles that actually called the movie risky since it wasn't based on a previous movie, TV show, stage play, novel, graphic novel, comic book, video game, news event, mythological event, etc. That's pretty sad. Inception is simply a movie made in the old school manner.
In previous decades not so many movies were re-made. Certain unspoken rules seemed to be followed when producing those remakes. Around 20 or so years needed to separate most remakes from their original unless the original was a foreign language film or something. The original movie had to be outdated and out of fashion in some respect and be in need of a contemporary facelift; the original certainly couldn't be an enduring classic. The re-make not only had to be really good, but it had to bring something new to the table that the original lacked. Hollywood studios have been violating all those rules lately.
I liked the 70's remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I thought David Cronenberg's 1986 remake of The Fly was excellent. Both were very different from the original movies and entertaining in their own ways. Recent remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street and various other remakes of 70's and 80's horror movies have all SUCKED. And this is just the horror genre.
A Star Is Born has been remade a few times. The original, starring Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, was released in 1937. The CinemaScope version with Judy Garland was released in 1954. A rock and roll story line was used in the 1976 version starring Barbra Streisand. That was also one of the first movies to have 70mm 6-track mag prints encoded with Dolby noise reduction. Naturally, another version of A Star Is Born is apparently in development, with a 2012 release time line. What's planned for this version? An American Idol style storyline, in 3D?
| IP: Logged
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All times are Central (GMT -6:00)
|
This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
|
Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classicTM
6.3.1.2
The Film-Tech Forums are designed for various members related to the cinema industry to express their opinions, viewpoints and testimonials on various products, services and events based upon speculation, personal knowledge and factual information through use, therefore all views represented here allow no liability upon the publishers of this web site and the owners of said views assume no liability for any ill will resulting from these postings. The posts made here are for educational as well as entertainment purposes and as such anyone viewing this portion of the website must accept these views as statements of the author of that opinion
and agrees to release the authors from any and all liability.
|
Home
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic