Hammer might do a little better than Beyond the Rave if they find themselves able to stick to classier influences than Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave. Outbidding Warner Brothers and Paramount for rights is a good start: Hammer has topped the abovementioned giants in a bidding war for remake rights to Let the Right One In, a novel-based Swedish kid-and-maybe-vampire romantic horror picture which won the feature prize at the Tribeca festival a couple weeks back. Tomas Alfredson directed the original; no writer or director has been assigned to the remake yet, but the original Swedish producers will remain involved.
Speaking of Hammer horror, it was just about this time last year that British studio Hammer Films was purchased by Dutch producer John De Mol and his investment group. Obviously this new 21st century Hammer has no real tie to the original – the more cynical of us might call it a shameless grab at latching onto a niche market with nostalgia for a revered if deceased name brand – but if the rights are still intact, there are quite a few great properties out there, and if it spurs renewed interest in some of those classics (reissued deluxe editions, increased availability), so much the better. If it means remakes of Hammer catalog, well, we'll see how that goes. There's still no announcement of remakes of To The Devil A Daughter or Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, but it's only a matter of time.
The first new Hammer production is Beyond the Rave, a horror serial currently airing episodically on Myspace. Beyond the Rave (not to be confused with Return of the Living Dead installment #5 Rave to the Grave) certainly doesn't look like a Hammer production – if I were De Mol, I'd get on the horn with Scott Bunt, or at least the production design and art direction team on the upcoming (though shot in 2006) Sea of Dust,
which would look pretty great if not for the sinking feeling that the acting is terrible and the script questionable. Actually, if I were De Mol, I'd call up Bunt, see who has UK distribution rights, and redub everything with British voiceover actors, throwing in a few European or Slavic actors whose English is thickly accented. Ingrid Pitt, a Hammer star from the good old days who knows what she's doing, can do her own dubbing. Maybe an Italian or Spanish actor for Tom Savini, whose plays a rather noncanon resurrected Prester John.
Hammer might do a little better than Beyond the Rave if they find themselves able to stick to classier influences than Return of the Living Dead 5: Rave to the Grave. Outbidding Warner Brothers and Paramount for rights is a good start: Hammer has topped the abovementioned giants in a bidding war for remake rights to Let the Right One In, a novel-based Swedish kid-and-maybe-vampire romantic horror picture which won the feature prize at the Tribeca festival a couple weeks back. Tomas Alfredson directed the original; no writer or director has been assigned to the remake yet, but the original Swedish producers will remain involved.
