The horror genre becomes victim of the remake merry-go-round once again. Bloody Disgusting were talking to director Declan O’Brien about his upcoming STV horror Wrong Turn 3 (I didn’t even know their was a Wrong Turn 2) when the dude revealed a juicy bit of news.
He has just bought the rights to Roger Corman’s 1960’s American comedy Little Shop of Horrors, which was already remade in the mid 80’s into a cult musical horror comedy by Frank Oz.
So O’Brien is hoping to make a remake, of a remake. Great!
I just optioned Roger Corman’s ‘The Little Shop of Horror’, which I’m setting up as a big studio remake,” he tells B-D this morning. “We’re in the process of talking to studios this week. It will be a remake of Roger’s original 1960’s movie. I don’t want to reveal too much, but it’s me, it’ll be dark,” he explains. “It wont be a musical.“
The original Little Shop of Horrors wasn’t a musical but a black comedy farce about an inadequate young florist’s assistant who cultivates a plant that feeds on human blood and flesh. I haven’t seen that version myself but I know of it, seeing as it was one of the early springboards for a young Jack Nicholson.
If I were a studio, I would be curious why O’Brien is interested in remaking Corman’s version and not the more marketable version from Oz. I wonder if he will have trouble selling this?
3 Comments
why complain about a remake when you’ve not even seen the original?
also, since when was a musical more marketable than a horror?
This has the potential to be something really really awesome.
Ill back Matt, and I have seen and own the original Jack Nicholson classic version. The remake is unnecessary, unless it offers something radically different (personally I had always wanted Tim Burton to get his hands on the project and offer something exceptionally new) like the musical remake actually did.
And generally speaking a musical is always going to generate more interest- especially into the DVD sales arena- than a horror, because of the hooks of the songs. Bad horror films tend to disappear into the mire, but a bad musical can survive even the most cutting of critical receptions as long as it has a memorabel chorus in there somewhere. 99% per cent of the populus will be able to tell you of the musical version of Little Shop… but how many do you reckon will know of the original?