They ’ ll be back
In SFX 256 there was a lot of bemoaning of the Ghostbusters remake. But Hollywood has always remade its most popular movies ( the Chuck Heston Ben- Hur was the third version of that story). It’s only come to the fore in the last decade because the ’ 70s was when the concept of a blockbuster first emerged, and people who grew up then became, in the 2000s, the influential Hollywood directors, producers, writers and studio execs who were in a position to stamp their own mark on their beloved childhood favourites. Now we are in the 2010s it’s the turn of ’ 80s films and TV shows to be remade by the people who adored them as children. In the 2020s we’ll probably have remakes of Forrest Gump and The Matrix and a Pulp Fiction TV series. People ask “Why don’t they leave the classics alone and remake something flawed but with potential?” If you strike gold you keep digging in the same place – there’s little financial sense in taking something that didn’t work and hoping it will second time round. Personally I hope the flawed- withpotential Titan AE will be turned into a gritty BSG- style live- action TV show. But which studio would pay out to make a TV series based on a flop movie?
Dave Barsby, Derby Bang goes my dream of a dark, grounded Pluto Nash reboot…