The main reason to remake a film is the main reason to make a sequel or a reboot or anything else connected to existing intellectual property: Brand name value. Everyone in Hollywood wants a hit, and at least according to conventional wisdom, the quickest and easy way to produce one is to make something with a built-in audience. And … Read more
Remakes of the Bret Easton Ellis story American Psycho and the Stephen King story The Dead Zone are both in the works A few years ago, we heard that Lionsgate was developing TV shows based on American Psycho and the Saw franchise. Obviously those projects didn’t go anywhere, as Saw has since been revived with … Read more
I cannot conceive of a movie that is more ’80s than Road House. Patrick Swayze at his most magnetic and muscly playing a “cooler” — basically a very fancy, very elite bouncer, who arrives in a little town in Missouri to clean up a rowdy bar called the Double Deuce, and gets mixed up with a local evil … Read more
Television networks and streaming services are always scouring foreign production companies’ big hits and attempting to scoop up the rights and make their own version. Sometimes they end up with hits, like The Office, one of the most popular American shows of all time which was itself based on a British series that was equally … Read more
Pressman Films is considering remakes of the horror films Christmas Evil and Sister, and possibly the crime film Bad Lieutenant Pressman Film is a production company that was founded by Ed Pressman, a prolific producer of over 90 films, including the likes of Wall Street, American Psycho, and The Crow. Sadly, Pressman passed away earlier this year at … Read more
When you get right down to it, remakes are about one thing: Brand recognition. A studio or a producer believes there is money to be made in releasing something with the same title and/or concept as an old hit. And that’s exactly what they do. That line of reasoning is not without some justification. Many of the … Read more
Disney started a new trend of remaking their animated films. What non-Disney animated films need live-action remakes? Disney’s latest trend is to remake some of their animated back catalog into “live-action” films. Live-action is in quotes because movies like The Lion King is still animated but with CGI instead of live actors. With The Little … Read more
Once upon a time, there was a Hollywood studio built on bringing the impossible to life. From a complex of offices on Buena Vista Street in Burbank, California, Walt Disney and his brilliant artists helped pioneer the art of feature animation. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Walt Disney Animation Studios produced such masterpieces as Snow … Read more
Sequels and remakes have terrible reputations. “They’re all Hollywood makes anymore!” “They’re creatively bankrupt!” “They’re awful!” You’ve surely heard these and other complaints many times before. They’re almost as old as movies themselves. (By the time movies had sound, they also had remakes and sequels.) In fairness, there are many good sequels, and arguably even … Read more