sp; The Hollywood ReporterTalk about no new ideas in Hollywood. In the last day or so it seems not one, but four old classic features are set to undergo the remake treatment according to trade paper The Hollywood Reporter. Here's a breakdown:
Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Regency Enterprises ("Man on Fire") has picked up David Collard's spec script, a remake of the 1956 RKO film of the same name. The original film's story centers on a newsman who intentionally frames himself for a murder he didn't commit to point out the dangers of circumstantial evidence and to expose an overzealous district attorney who has manipulated evidence in the past to gain convictions. Everything is going as planned until his friend, the one person who can exonerate him, is killed.
Last Holiday Paramount Pictures has entered into early negotiations with Wayne Wang ("Maid in Manhattan") to direct its remake of "Last Holiday," which is set to star Queen Latifah. The first film starred Alec Guinness as an average man who, learning that he doesn't have long to live, cashes in everything he has to spend his dying days in a swanky resort where he is mistaken for a super-rich eccentric. This remake will feature Latifah in the lead role.
Swiss Family Robinson Walt Disney Co. is mounting a remake of the classic family film "Swiss Family Robinson", hiring scribe Greg Poirier to pen a new feature script. This version is a new telling of the classic story set in its original time period, around the beginning of the 19th century.
The Poseidon Adventure Mark Protosevich has been hired to write "The Poseidon Adventure," the remake that Wolfgang Petersen's Radiant Pictures and reality TV producer Mike Fleiss are producing for Warner Bros. The original movie, released in 1972 by 20th Century Fox, told the story of a ragtag group of survivors trapped on a passenger ship after it is capsized by a monster wave. The only question now is, whose going to fill Shelley Winters' very ample shoes.
Thanks to 'JTE'.
