Back in January came the news that following his directorial debut with Marvel’s “Werewolf by Night” special, Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino intends to direct a remake of 1954’s man-eating giant ant creature feature “Them!” at Warner Bros. Pictures.
Gordon Douglas helmed the original in which a nest of ants in the New Mexico desert has grown gigantic after being irradiated by nuclear test blasts. It becomes a national threat when two young queen ants and their consorts escape to set-up new nests. It leads to a big showdown in the Los Angeles sewer system.
Participating in a Q&A with Collider this week following a screening of his “Werewolf by Night In Color” special, Giacchino offered an update on where the production currently stands.
He indicated a screenwriter is currently being sought for the project after a pause due to the writer’s strike:
“So, anyway, the development we’re in right now, we’re about to find our writer. We were about to make the deal, and then the writer’s strike happened. So then that went on pause, and we waited for 140-whatever days it was. So now we’re just starting up again.”
He sees the themes of the 1954 movie as still being extremely timely, and adjustable to different kinds of real-life threats than the atomic horror of the original:
“‘Them!’ was a film in the 1950s about giant ants. It was sort of discussing the oncoming nuclear age that we found ourselves in and were woefully unprepared for as human beings, and so I thought there’s so much going on in the world – that was clearly a lesson that we didn’t learn as humans – and it feels like it’s a story that could be told again today with a lot of the s— that’s going on in the world. I love that movie dearly. It’s a very special film.”
The original was considered the first of the 1950s big bug movies and led to copies like “Tarantula,” “The Deadly Mantis,” “The Black Scorpion” and “Earth vs. the Spider”.
