David Christopher Bell
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It used to be that if a movie bombed, film executives would read the tea leaves and not make that damn movie again. But nowadays, the game has changed. Just because a movie is "mildly dated" or "criminally terrible" doesn't mean that a studio shouldn't mindlessly give it another go like a three-legged lemming. Here are some of the most inexplicable remakes coming down the pike.
That's right: The surfing, bank-robbin', sky-divin', president-mask-wearing '90s action flick is getting remade -- only without the surfing part, which they've traded in for "extreme sports" to better appeal to 2002 audiences. This means the title of the film no longer makes any sense, since it's a surfing reference. At this point, why not just call the Point Break remake something else and be done with it?
Universal Studios
Worked for these guys.
And while there's no denying that Point Break has that nostalgic cult appeal -- and we're looking forward to the robber in the Bill Clinton mask flashing his penis to people -- the new Red Dawn proved that relying on nostalgia is a good formula for not making back your budget. But hey, at least they have Keanu Reeves' blessing, and in the end that's all that matters.
There's probably something clever to be said about a zombie flick that keeps coming back even after the latest version bombed, but we're too busy puking to think of it. While George Romero's Day of the Dead was already the crappiest entry in the original Living Dead series, the remake in 2008 managed to suck even harder, so bringing it back again would be downright masochistic. Now guess what they're doing. Go on, guess.
United Film Distribution Company, Millennium Entertainment
The poster for the next one will be a zombie dropping a deuce and flipping off the viewer.
The same producers of the 2008 film are now teaming up with the assholes who won't stop remaking Texas Chainsaw to do a brand new Day of the Dead. If the declining quality trend continues, this film might actually create a black hole of suck that will kill us all. Come on, guys, stop remaking this movie -- not just for the good of your finances, but for the good of the entire universe.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which was a bastardized adaptation of an Alan Moore comic, sucked so much that it singlehandedly convinced Sean Connery to retire from acting (and he survived both Zardoz and Highlander II). So, of course, Fox has decided to cause a whole new generation of actors to question their vocation by approving a TV show pilot based on that spectacular flop of a movie. And it's being written and produced by Green Lantern movie writer Michael Green, because clearly that's someone who should be in charge of more comic book adaptations.
20th Century Fox
To make it even more edgy, this one will be shortened to just the tip of the "L."
Meanwhile, Showtime is working on a series with a similar premise but with actual talent attached. Can't we just go ahead and cancel the Fox version now?
That's it. It's happened. We've reached the remake singularity -- movies are now being remade before the latest version is even out. Don't believe us? Both Disney and Warner Bros. are currently working on live-action remakes of The Jungle Book at the same time. What makes it more baffling is that there are already two relatively recent live-action Jungle Book movies from the mid-'90s that you probably don't remember (one by Disney and one by Tri-Star), because they were terrible. By the way, no live-action Jungle Book film, including the 1942 original, has made any significant money.
Walt Disney
The animated one did, but it had cross-dressing and casual racism going for it.
But maybe we're being too pessimistic. What are the chances that Disney's new version will finally get it right? Well, they've hired the guy who wrote Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li to work on it, so ... yeah, about zero.
