Even as Hollywood continues to be racked with remake/reboot fever, there have only been rumblings here and there about the Poltergeist remake. That's quite the change from three years ago, when the project was briefly scheduled to hit theaters in 2010 ' only to end up being delayed indefinitely.
That looks to change, now that Sam Raimi is committed to producing (but not directing, as some news sources have been reporting) a revamping of the 1982 supernatural horror flick, which was directed by Tobe Hooper and based on an original story conceived by Steven Spielberg.
Heat Vision has the scoop on Raimi boarding the Poltergeist remake train, which will also be produced by Raimi's Drag Me to Hell collaborators Nathan Kahane and Robert Tapert, along with frequent Japanese horror remake backer Roy Lee (The Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, etc.). Not-so-coincidentally, the co-writer of Raimi's upcoming Oz: The Great and Powerful, David Lindsay-Abaire, is penning the latest script draft for the Poltergeist remake.
Raimi, as many reading this are probably well aware of, is also producing a remake of his own 1980s horror cult classic, The Evil Dead. Similarly, MGM is the studio behind the impending Carrie remake/re-interpretation ' which has managed to snag a star, director and release date in recent months ' and is probably now looking to fast-track Poltergeist for production, considering the big names that've been assembled to back the project.
Until we know more about what approach the Poltergeist remake will take to refashioning the original movie - or who's going to be sitting in the director's chair ' it's hard to say whether or not this flick abides by Screen Rant's Top 5 Rules For Movie Remakes. Carrie's themes could benefit from being 'modernized' for the 21st century, whereas the Evil Dead remake is taking a significantly different approach to the original story.
Poltergeist, by comparison, isn't a story that immediately reads as potentially being that different, when the setting is 'modernized' for an age full of new technology; as Insidious demonstrated last year, stories about haunted houses in the suburbs haven't exactly changed a whole lot over the past three decades. Similarly, the portrayal of angry spirits and specters in cinema remains much the same as it ever was (unlike vampires, a la the Fright Night remake).
That's all to say: until more is revealed about exactly what 'new ideas' the Poltergeist remake will be bringing to the table, this reads as one recycling of an older property that's not really worth getting excited about.
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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
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