New Flesh Lives Again in Videodrome Remake
I did a Dread Central April Fool’s Day story a few years back touting Paul W.S. Anderson as writing/directing a remake of Videodrome. Today I get to do essentially the same story, only this time the remake is for real, and if nothing else, at least we can take pause in knowing Paul W.S. Anderson will not be involved.
In Hollywood’s continuing quest to remake every noteworthy horror picture of the last 35 years, today Variety reports that 1983’s Videodrome officially gets its turn on the remake chopping block courtesy of Universal, screenwriter Ehran Kruger (The Ring, The Ring 2, Blood & Chocolate), and his producing partner Daniel Bobker.
The David Cronenberg original was a truly bizarre mindfuck starring James Woods as a seedy TV producer who gets hooked on an underground snuff television program called “Videodrome” that seems to really get inside people’s heads, leading to surreal hallucinations that may not entirely be hallucinations at all and a strange conspiracy behind it all.
David Cronenberg has as of yet no involvement in the remake, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it stays that way. To recreate Cronenberg’s vision of the original seems almost impossible, and from the vague description of what the duo behind the new film have in mind, it sounds like we can expect this to be a dumbed down, far more mainstream take on the concept: “The new picture will modernize the concept, infuse it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.”
Videodrome … remade … as a large-scale sci-fi action thriller? The bloody hell? At least in my April Fool’s Day story I had Paul W.S. Anderson modernizing it by building it around the age of the Internet and not by trying to turn it into Total Recall with what will most likely end up to be a PG-13 rating.
Forgive me if this news does not make me want to jump up and shout “Long live the new flesh!”
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