Red Dawn remake

pANDAS Radio · 9th July 2008, 2:50pm

Quote:

MGM now stands for Mary's Greenlighting Movies.

Mary Parent, that is, who has rapidly been rebuilding the production capabilities of the iconic studio since she grabbed the foreman's hat in March. On Tuesday, the Worldwide Motion Picture Group chairman gave her first greenlight to a spec script from sci-fi mavericks Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard titled "The Cabin in the Woods." Goddard, who most recently scripted the $168 million grossing (worldwide) Paramount monster movie "Cloverfield," will make the film his directorial debut. Whedon will produce as well.

Parent also is pushing forward MGM's "Red Dawn" remake. The studio has just hired screenwriter Carl Ellsworth to recraft the ultimate homeland invasion story for a new generation of besieged high schoolers. Dan Bradley, a second unit director and/or stunt coordinator on "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Spider-Man 3" and the forthcoming "Quantum of Solace," is moving into the director's chair on the update. Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson of Contrafilm, whose "Journey to the Center of the Earth" opens Friday, will produce.

Parent and MGM chairman and CEO Harry Sloan announced the "Red Dawn" remake -- along with a big-budget rebuild of "RoboCop," which director Darren Aronofsky among others has recently been in to discuss -- in May at the Festival de Cannes. As the studio regroups, its executives have realized that they also can exploit the numerous classic and cult properties in the strong MGM library for a new audience. (Parent seems equally willing to take risks on such freshman directors as Goddard and Bradley.)

The original "Dawn" was the Cold War brainchild of writer-director John Milius, who devised a World War III invasion of America by the Soviets and Cubans.

"The tone is going to be very intense, very much keeping in mind the post-9/11 world that we're in," Ellsworth said. "As 'Red Dawn' scared the heck out of people in 1984, we feel that the world is kind of already filled with a lot of paranoia and unease, so why not scare the hell out of people again?"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/...f5c48c0666d28e

Hammer · 9th July 2008, 2:56pm

You have to wonder why they are 'remaking' Red Dawn, instead of, you know just giving what sounds like a different film with similar themes it's own title.

poprock · 9th July 2008, 3:00pm

To leverage the power of a brand they already own?

Hammer · 9th July 2008, 3:02pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by poprock

To leverage the power of a brand they already own?

That theory would have held a few years ago, before we'd been treated to several years of rubbish remakes of classic films.

pANDAS Radio · 9th July 2008, 3:44pm

He's right though, they already own Red Dawn so it makes more fiscal sense to rework it than to fund a new project with similar ideas. Why buy a brand new script when they can pay a lot less to have an existing one rewritten, it also means that this film gets a lot more free publicity instead of being a new project that people end up saying is a rip off of Red Dawn.

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