STEPHEN KING ASKS "WHY, WHEN THE ORIGINAL WAS SO GOOD?"
According to Deadline's Mike Fleming, MGM and Screen Gems have hired Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa ("the playwright and comic book writer who was brought on to rewrite and hopefully save Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark") to go back to Stephen King's original novel, Carrie, and adapt it into a new movie version. Fleming likens the planned remake to what Joel and Ethan Coen did with last year's True Grit, going back to the source novel and creating something independent of the original adaptation. Fleming also notes that Aguirre-Sacasa has "a relationship" with King, having written the graphic novel adaptation of King's The Stand.KING STILL HAS LOVE FOR DE PALMA'S VERSION, BUT LOHAN AS CARRIE MAKES HIM PONDER...
King himself has publicly stated that Brian De Palma's 1976 film version improved on his novel. On Friday, in the wake of the remake news, he talked to Entertainment Weekly's Jeff Labrecque, reinforcing his love of De Palma's film version. "I’ve heard rumblings about a Carrie remake," King told Labrecque, "as I have about The Stand and It. Who knows if it will happen? The real question is why, when the original was so good? I mean, not Casablanca, or anything, but a really good horror-suspense film, much better than the book. Piper Laurie really got her teeth into the bad-mom thing. Although Lindsay Lohan as Carrie White… hmmm. It would certainly be fun to cast. I guess I could get behind it if they turned the project over to one of the Davids: Lynch or Cronenberg."
OTHER DE PALMA REMAKE PLANS: 'DRESSED TO KILL' & 'THE FURY'
In 2002, NBC remade Carrie as a TV movie that the network hoped would lead into a TV series, but the ratings and feedback told a different story. Since De Palma's Sisters was remade by Douglas Buck in 2006, two other De Palma films have been batted around the potential remake cage. In June of 2007, MGM partnered with Hyde Park Entertainment, who hired Rick Alexander to write a remake of De Palma's Dressed To Kill (a film written and directed by De Palma). The plan at the time was to have the remake inaugurate a direct-to-DVD series aimed at specific demos. Alexander's IMDB bio states that he "has written a boldly conceived 'reimagining' of the classic '80s thriller Dressed To Kill."
In April of 2008, FOX 2000 hired Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman to write a contemporary reimagining of John Farris' The Fury, which De Palma had made into a film in 1978. McGreevy and Shipman were hired by Warner Bros. earlier this year to reimagine Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Jaume Collett-Serra set to direct.
Updated: Friday, May 20, 2011 9:13 AM CDT
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