Echorelocation

In addition to My Sassy Girl (and It's Alive remake director Josef Rusnak's upcoming Victims), Jesse Bradford is also attached to The Echo, due to start shooting in August. The Echo is a remake of Sigaw, a 2004 Filipino haunted-apartment thriller in the Dark Water vein.

Yam Laranas directed and handled photography on the original, based on his own story. They'll give him the reins and significantly more than $350,000 he used for the original (budget is estimated at $5 mil). With Filipino horror holding less cachet than Japanese and Korean, it's good to see the studio going the Grudge/Ring 2 direction of letting the original director make the film.

Of course some translation/localization is needed, but let's hope the use of Eric Bernt - writer of Romeo Must Die, whose sequel/remake work includes the story for Highlander: Endgame and the script for the 2007 Hitcher remake - doesn't bode too poorly.

Sassy

With news on A Tale of Two Sisters, it might be time to check in with a couple of Korean remakes in the pipes. Remake rights were sold in 2002 for My Sassy Girl, a runaway South Korean romantic comedy hit based on an internet-serialized recounting of the author's love life - a blog, of sorts.

The American version is scheduled to hit theaters some time in 2007 from director Yann Samuell (Love Me If You Dare), who replaced Gurinder Chadha (Bride and Prejudice). Leads go to Elisha Cuthbert, who appeared in the 2005 House of Wax remake, and Jesse Bradford.

Never were there such devoted sisters

David Strathairn has joined the cast of the American Tale of Two Sisters remake, due 2008. The flick is directed by British first-timers Thomas and Charles Guard from a script by Craig Rosenberg (whose three scripts include the better-than-it-looks Hotel de Love). Strathairn, getting a better choice of non-Sayles roles post-Good Night and Good Luck, joins Elizabeth Banks (Slither, Wet Hot American Summer), whose sequel work includes the small Betty Brant role in Spider-Man 2 and 3.

The lead role goes to Arielle Kebbel, who honed her American-version-of-Eastern-horror-film chops in The Grudge 2. Other sequel work since her inauspicious debut in the loathsome Soul Plane has included Be Cool and American Pie: Band Camp.

Kim Ji-woon's good but not great 2003 Tale of Two Sisters, a Korean horror-mystery based on a traditional folk tale, saw DVD release through Tartan's Asia Extreme line and has won generally good reviews.

Lake Placid 2: Placider

In further much-demanded sequel delay news, Lake Placid 2 has seen its DVD release pushed back from the intended date of 6/19 until January of 2008. It's a little surprising, considering the flick was shot for the Sci-Fi channel and already aired in April, but perhaps they need to shoot some extra footage to make the DVD unrated.

The first Lake Placid is hard not to like, a dumb, jokey little giant-croc thriller with a surprisingly game cast (Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Brendan Gleeson, Oliver Platt) and arm-around-the-shoulder direction from Steve Miner.

Lake Placid 2 retains none of the original cast, substituting Cloris Leachman for Betty White. It's the fourth directorial effort from David Flores - all for Sci-Fi - and his highest IMDb-rated film yet at 3.4. After his debut, Boa Vs. Python, received a 2.9, both Crimson Force and S.S. Doomtrooper both received 2.8, failing to topple it. Hopefully the Sci-Fi channel will realize that Flores is most at home in herpetological film.

Blood in the moonlight

In a divergence from film but an intriguing bit of sequel news, the controversy over Manhunt 2 continues. 2003's Manhunt, featuring a gleefully nasty performance by Brian Cox, made headlines and moved a lot of copies based on its excellent gameplay and devilish, gruesome storyline. It's still illegal in some parts of the world. Manhunt 2 was recently given an Adults Only (AO) rating in the US and banned in England, Ireland, and Australia, with more bans likely forthcoming.

A New York Times article yesterday finds Manhunt 2's violence comparable to - milder than, in fact - modern horror cinema.

Neither Nintendo nor Sony will release an AO game; no AO game has been released on a console, with the exception of the post-release rerating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, subsequently pulled from shelves in its AO incarnation. Rockstar has announced a delay and will appeal/trim/resubmit for an M rating.

With Manhunt 2 in the spotlight facing challenges parental, legal, and censorious, the question begs asking: why not step to the plate? If any company is going to do it, it'll be Rockstar. If they were to release an M-rated version on PS3 and Wii and an uncut AO (or unrated: ESRB ratings, like MPAA ratings, are voluntary) version on Xbox 360, strong Xbox sales numbers would give a kick in the pants to industry thinking. Most retailers won't carry an AO title, but moving units via an exclusive contract or even online distribution would turn a lot of heads.

It Lives Again Again

Curiously absent from IMDb is the upcoming remake of Larry Cohen's 1974 It's Alive, reportedly shot in Bulgaria sometime in March. The flick is helmed by Josef Rusnak (The Thirteenth Floor, the upcoming Victims) and stars Bijou Phillips. The director announcement may come as a letdown - Cohen had planned to make it his first directorial job (absent an Air Force One documentary) in over a decade. His script was used; Cohen's always had an interest in social issues through genre film, so this time around, he's focusing less on the abortion issues of the original and more on genetic engineering.

The original was Cohen's most financially successful film, birthing two sequels and at least one blatant rip-off, The Devil Within (aka I Don't Want to be Born, The Baby, It Lives Within Her, It's Growing Inside Her, The Monster, Sharon's Baby). Recently lauded in this blog was Don Coscarelli for authoring the entire Phantasm quadrilogy; Cohen similarly wrote and directed the entire It's Alive trilogy. All three films are recently reissued on DVD in a bargain-priced single-case edition, all with Cohen commentaries. Enjoy!

Montag the Magnificent

In additional Bijou Phillips news, this weekend saw the premiere of The Wizard of Gore at the L.A. Film Festival. The flick is a remake of gore godfather Herschell Gordon Lewis' 1970 original. Expectations may be low, but filmmakers assembled an interesting cast: Crispin Glover, Jeffrey Combs, and Brad Dourif, along with Phillips and Kip Pardue.

There seems to be at least a minor resurgence of interest in Lewis' body of work; to that end, more updates soon on other rumored projects after current status is obtained.

Hostile too

Variety reported late 2006 that Eli Roth referred to Hostel III as "all but signed," but recently he stated that he's "done with it." Hostel Part II has done meager box-office, hurt (according to Roth's estimation, but it stands to reason) by the wide internet distribution of a stolen workprint of the film.

Hostel opened to $20 mil, but both good and shocked word of mouth circulated rapidly, and it gained steam to wind up with a healthy take of $47 million, ten times budget. Hostel Part II opens to poor box office - only $8.2 mil with a second-week drop to $3m - and executives scratch their heads and wonder why only $8 mil worth of people want to watch Heather Matarazzo get flayed, having thought they understood the current marketability of graphic, torturous violence. Despite what was at the time huge enthusiasm, Hostel's IMDb rating has dropped over time to 5.8, with 11% of voters giving it a 10 and 14% of voters giving it a 1. Roth enjoys (and he does enjoy: "Well, when someone throws up while watching one of your movies, it's like a standing ovation") both a strong following and a rabid anti-fan base. His stuff does polarize, and it's not without reason. If it were only gorehounds going to watch the films, and Puritans staying home, it would make sense. Some decryers simply aren't up for the ride: in a recent Joe Carnahan blog, the director of Narc (R for strong brutal violence, drug content and pervasive language) and Smokin' Aces (R for strong bloody violence, pervasive language, some nudity and drug use) bemoans the state of the industry even while admitting he hasn't watched the films in question. But seasoned blood fans as well as Friday-evening teens are coming away with complaints.

I write somewhat more extensively on Hostel and Hostel Part II, but it's too lengthy to post here. If you're interested and have a little time to spare, the unexpurgated - by which I mean novella-length - version is here.

Your move, creep

Yesterday's mention of Ed Neumeier and his penchant for satiric action pictures calls for an update on a project that's been in the works at least since a 2002 lunch between Neumeier and Paul Verhoeven, during which the pair discussed a revisitation of their immortal 1987 collaboration RoboCop. Verhoeven referred to a potential return as "the first real sequel," disregarding a sizeable pile of subsequent work in the RoboCop canon: comics, video games, a few toy lines, the obligatory pinball machine, and even RoboCop: The Ride.

RoboCop 2 released in 1990 to decent box office but poor reviews, Irvin Kershner failing to replicate the sequel success he worked for The Empire Strikes Back. Comic icon Frank Miller's script was overhauled, as was his script for RoboCop 3; fan speculation finally saw the original RoboCop 2 script released in comic form as Frank Miller's RoboCop, which might thus be considered more canonical than the second and third films. RoboCop 3 released in 1993 and immediately tanked.

The franchise enjoyed two animated TV series and one drastically toned-down live-action series. Starring Richard Eden and airing in 1994 - shortly after the failure of RoboCop 3 - it unsurprisingly lasted a single season, during which RoboCop fought such luminaries as (according to cast lists) Dr. Cray Z. Mallardo, Vladimiar "Stitch" Molotov, William "Pudface" Morgan, and possibly Mayor Friendly.

The character reappeared in 2000, when a Canadian production company shot four feature-length originals for cable under the heading RoboCop: Prime Directives; they would appear on DVD soon after.

The sequel developed, over the next few years, into more of a remake. Neumeier remained attached, but Verhoeven lost interest. It was shelved around November of 2006, but if business is good for the recent DVD reissue (which it may be, since it has a fancy cover and a bargain price) and the upcoming 20th anniversary edition, look for the studios to reconsider.

The only good bug

Recently announced is third part in Starship Troopers series. Despite being squashed at the box office (it made back only about half of its nearly $100 mil budget domestically, though worldwide and DVD eventually turned a profit), Paul Verhoeven's 1997 adaptation of the Heinlein novel is much-discussed for its commentary blend of gung-ho action and Riefenstahl-quoting propaganda. It hatched numerous spin-off properties: a board game, a pinball game, comic books, licensed and knock-off video games, and the computer-animated TV series Roughnecks (confusingly aired on now-defunct pro-Christian PAX network). 2004 straight-to-video sequel, the only directorial effort of effects guy Phil Tippett, was made for a tiny fraction of the original's cost (about $7 mil) and turned a profit on the original's well-liked name.

Casper Van Dien, who starred in the first but was absent in the second, will return to reprise his lead role. Ed Neumeier, who wrote the first two, will write and make his directorial debut.

Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk

Bubba Ho-Tep was an interesting flick, a nice imaginative idea, well-cast and acted, but given what could have been, a little lacking in the plain old fun department. Made for about a million bucks (with thanks to Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis for working cheaply), it's become a mild hit on DVD.

There's some talk going around that Campbell won't be in the upcoming Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires. Folks are acting surprised, but the project is more of a distant prequel; with Davis' death two years ago, it wasn't likely to be closely related to Bubba Ho-Tep. The given premise is Elvis shooting a film in Louisiana and stumbling upon some vampires, which makes this sound more like an Elseworlds Elvis and less like it has anything to do with the pleasantly questionable derangement of the leads in the original. Paul Giamatti will join such luminaries as Pat Hingle and Randy Quaid in the ranks of actors playing Colonel Tom Parker.

While Don Coscarelli gave up control of the Beastmaster franchise, taking only character-creation credit on the second, third, and TV series, he's much admired among horror fans for keeping Phantasm his own, writing and directing all four films. It's largely unheard of in sequeldom - perhaps a rare moment of appreciation from this blog is in order.

Bedlam

A lesson to remember: when objects of power and beauty fall into the wrong hands, the results can be disastrous.

Object in this case:
the Val Lewton box set.

The hands: Mark Burg and Oren Koules, producers of the Saw franchise, who have signed with RKO to produce four remakes: Bedlam, The Body Snatcher, I Walked with a Zombie, and a player to be named later. The fact that all are available in the superlative Lewton set point to someone getting the box for Christmas and finally cracking it open about two weeks ago.

The most frequent reason for a remake is financial - but the relative obscurity of Bedlam et al. among the filmgoing public indicates the unlikeliness of this as an explanation. If it were a lifelong labor of love, it's hard to criticize, but the four-at-a-time announcement indicates a scenario, not far from the earlier jest, of recent discovery. The most likely explanation seems to be that someone was impressed with the quality of the set's films and thought it canny to borrow some ideas. Perhaps judgment should be withheld - neither producer has an overreliance on sequels or remakes - but Lewton's work, especially I Walked with a Zombie, is beloved by aficionados and not considered in need of remaking. 1982's Cat People was plenty.

Three O'Clock High

Trailer is out for James Mangold's remake of 3:10 to Yuma, a great 1957 Western by Delmer Daves with story by Elmore Leonard.

Casting had originally looked like Eric Bana and Tom Cruise in the respective Van Heflin and Glenn Ford roles, but improved drastically to Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Mangold has some ability, but for the guy who made Cop Land to decry Westerns as "narcissistic, ponderous film" seems questionable.

Carin' A-lot-ovich

The only logical conclusion to our Paul W.S. Anderson sequelthon (until he announces a Bionic Commando script in six weeks) is to announce a sequel to Paul W.S. Anderson. He and Milla Jovovich are expecting a kid in the fall. Presumably (and hopefully), this ensures the return of the Resident Evil franchise in 25 years or so, starring Milla Jr. or directed by Paul Jr. (This assuming DTV sequels don't keep it going until then.)

Ultimate Nullifier

A brief additional note about today's sequel releases: Fantastic Four Two, a sequel which will give rise to a third part, likely in about a scant two more years to keep momentum going, and Nancy Drew. Why include Nancy Drew? Just to mention this: in a small window into how the business of the sequel really works, a second installment was greenlit three months ago.

Friendship

This is barely Paul W.S. Anderson-related, but the extravaganza is winding down. Anderson first came to prominence with the Mortal Kombat movie, which returned its budget several times over. He declined involvement in the sequel, which fared notably less well, making the third a mildly surprising choice for attempting an upcoming theatrical release of Mortal Kombat: Devastation, 13 years after the previous sequel.

The game series is about fifteen years and sixteen titles deep, and a reliable seller, but the franchise is clearly past its glory days, which included an animated prequel to the first film, one season of a 1996 animated TV series (voice talents of Luke Perry, Clancy Brown, Ron Perlman, Olivia d'Abo), one 1998 season plus a single second-season episode of a live-action show (featuring a young Kristanna Loken, whose big break would be T3 before largely disappearing into Uwe Boll videogame adaptations), comic book series, action figures, kollectible kard khallenge, etc.

Film is to be directed by mink [sic], a British comic writer and music video director with a couple poorly regarded action pics (Full Clip, Into the Sun) under his belt. That said, he's now affiliated with Tarantino's A Band Apart production company, so perhaps there's some potential. He posts pretty regularly on the IMDb pages for his films, so you can gather your own impressions.

Just to bring things around, producer Lawrence Kasanoff worked in an exective capacity on Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go To College.

Lament of Innocence

Got a tip so fast it was almost a rebuttal from Dana Danger over at the excellent Wet Streets: Paul W.S. Anderson is indeed off Castlevania as director, but will collaborate on a rewrite with the new director, Sylvain White, whose Stomp the Yard is better regarded than its IMDb rating would indicate. White's other feature work is two sequels out of two: Trois 3 [ed: 9]: The Escort and I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer.

I went to school with the guy, but didn't really know him. Seemed like a good enough guy based on two conversations and a handful of classes.

Also, I would like to be the first person to make a CaSylvainia joke in print. Thank you.

Nemesis

Continuing the Paul W.S. Anderson: the official website has launched, and now only a little while longer until Resident Evil becomes the first videogame adaptation to make it to a trilogy (non-animated; there have been plenty of Street Fighter toons and a veritable passel of Pokemon titles), beating Mortal Kombat to the high punch. Director is Russell Mulcahy (Highlander), whose first work was filming a Derek and Clive special. Mulcahy replaces usually-a-DP Alexander Witt (RE: Apocalypse was his directorial debut and, so far, swan song), who took over for P.W.S. Anderson, who only directed the first, but wrote all three films. Major cast members return, plus Ashanti. There's a thesis to be written on (generally talentless) pop singers/rappers showing up in horror film, or at least a longish blog entry somewhere down the line.

Peter Gunz

Latest is that Paul W.S. Anderson has signed on to direct the on-again-off-again Spy Hunter adaptation, agreeing to write the fifth or sixth version of the script. Previous draft-writers' sequel work includes 2 Fast 2 Furious, X-Men 2 and 3, and Freddy vs. Jason.

The Rock, slowly transitioning to Dwayne Johnson, has been attached almost since the rights were acquired in 2003, but when John Woo left and the project fell into disarray, he may have been removed; will have to wait and see. As he has already provided voice and likeness for a videogame sequel (Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run), seems likely he might want to stay aboard.

The original videogame appeared in 1983, followed by a pinball version, an arcade sequel, numerous home versions, two more sequels in the Playstation 2/XBox era, and a hidden bonus version in Microsoft Excel.

Harmony of Dissonance

Recent rumors indicate that Paul W.S. Anderson may have left the upcoming adaptation of the Castlevania video game series, casting doubt on the project's future. The script was Anderson's, and chief producers were Anderson and production partner Jeremy Bolt, so this may hit the reset button on that whole particular symphony of the night.

This is not to be confused with Castlevania: Dracula's Curse, an animated trilogy based on Castlevania III (NES) and currently in the scripting stage from talented British comics-and-more scribe Warren Ellis.

AvP 2: PvA

In tangential Paul W.S. Anderson news, Alien Vs. Predator 2: Survival of the Fittest (though that subtitle hasn't been mentioned recently) has been given the somewhat unlikely, Oscar-friendly release date of December 25th. Despite a much more logical line of thinking behind it, the gambit didn't do well for last year's Black Christmas remake.

Anderson is not involved, which is good news for the almost-everyone who hated the 2004 comic adaptation, which he wrote and directed. However, it remains to be seen what will be accomplished by first-time writer Shane Salerno and first-time directors the Strause Brothers (visual effects guys), taking command of a batch of TV actors.

Shareeka Epps was great in Half Nelson, so she's a natural fit for AvP (?), but if more avid TV-watchers want to defend the talents of Reiko Aylesworth ("24"), Steven Pasquale ("Rescue Me"), Johnny Lewis ("The O.C."), or the other numerous small-screeners involved, there's always comment room below.