VIDEODROME remake - Worse news than the swine flu pandemic?

You simply do not remake the work of David Cronenberg. And if you're going to remake Cronenberg, you absolutely do not remake freaking' Videodrome, one of the most surreal and unsettling films ever made. (Click the picture at left to purchase the Criterion DVD on Amazon.) Why not just remake Un Chien Andalou, while you're at it? And if you're a studio planning a remake of Videodrome, you absolutely, positively do not hand it over to the screenwriter of the upcoming Transformers movie.

And yet all of this is coming to pass. Variety reports that Ehren Kruger will actually write and direct this thing. And just to dash any hopes that Kruger understands why the original movie has become a cult classic and will respect his source material, the Variety story describes his plans for the project thusly: "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."

Seriously? Videodrome, remade as a large-scale sci-fi action thriller? The prospect is at least as disturbing as any of Max Renn's hallucinations from the original film. And that's saying a lot.

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Technocrati tags: [Videodrome][Ehren+Kruger][David Cronenberg]