It's over a year since the announcement that the Weinstein's Dimension Films had picked up the rights to John Landis' howling mad classic. But if you were hoping it had gone away in the wake of the** Wolfman **debacle, think on. The LA Times reports that a writer is now attached to the remake of **An American Werewolf in London.
And it's Fernley Phillips, whose most visible credit to date is writing and co-producing Joel Schumacker's The Number 23, which starred Jim Carrey a couple of years ago. Safe hands then.
The thrust this time round is said to be dramatically different to Landis' classic 1981 original, but we can't really see how, given that the central premise is right there in the title. Could it be (gasp!) two female tourists that stray off the moor? But you may want to take heart that Sean and Bryan Furst are involved on the producing side. Daybreakers, which they oversaw for the Spierig Brothers, was pretty nifty (it's arguably a better film of I Am Legend than I Am Legend was) so maybe, just maybe, they've got something up their sleeves that'll surprise everyone.
And An American Werewolf in Paris was pretty awful (even though Julie Delpy was in it), so if this were to franchise out, maybe it'd make for better sequels. What say you?
Sobbing Landis fans can console themselves with Burke and Hare, released in the UK on October 29. There's a very good feature on it in the current issue of Empire, don'tcha know...