David Cronenberg‘s Videodrome is a fascinating film and one I’m sure I’ll go back to continuously to explore again and again, but where so many hold a special place for the film, I can’t say I’m one of them. However, the idea of a studio remaking it doesn’t exactly make much sense and the Ehren Kruger script Universal is reportedly handing over to first time feature director Adam Berg isn’t exactly a new one.
I first reported on Kruger’s script back in 2009 when, at the time, I hadn’t seen Videodrome. I’ve since seen it three times in the last three years, which is to say, yeah, it’s one worth going back to, but hardly the first property you’d think of in terms of remakes.
To begin, Videodrome found most of its followers after its 1983 theatrical release where it managed only $2.1 million. That’s not a lot. Adjust that gross for inflation and you only manage $5.3 million in today’s dollars and that’s probably exactly what they would get should they decide to remake it.
See that image above, that’s a response card form a 1983 test screening of Videodrome. Does anyone think reactions would be any different from the majority of general audience members today? Unless, of course, they try and dumb it down into some PG-13 CG-fest, and it sounds like that’s exactly what they’re planning.
Deadline reports the news saying when Kruger and producing partner Daniel Bobker set it up at Universal, they planned to modernize the concept, infusing it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller. I’m not even sure what that means. Even if you throw out the film’s whole thematic bend on the power of transmitted information and media, where does nano-technology come into play and how does it become an action thriller?
I don’t even think this is me getting protective over the original. Like I said, I find it fascinating but don’t look at it as the Holy Grail, it’s just simply a baffling idea to take what is largely an unknown film to most of the film-going society and remaking it as something it never was.
There is probably room to do something of a Videodrome remake though. In today’s world, the medium is most-certainly the message, more so now than ever. The “new flesh” has become a reality, but I don’t see it realized by Kruger, whose recent claim to fame are the scripts for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon and the upcoming fourth film in the franchise. As I said, the idea for the remake, and Kruger’s script, has been around since 2009, but before that he penned The Skeleton Key, which was perhaps even worse than the last two Transformers films.
I won’t make any judgments on Berg, whose film resume is vacant and his most notable output is the “frozen in time” commercial for Phillips I’ve included below. Over at Deadline, Mike Fleming says the commercial has an “early Cronenberg-esque vibe to it”, which is something he’s going to have to explain considering I have no idea what he is talking about.
In all likelihood this film will never get made, but I still can’t help but wonder why Universal would consider making it. Imagine it was made, those that make the connection to the Cronenberg film will most likely reject it before giving it a chance and those that don’t will have no idea there was ever a original. So, again, why even call it a remake? Strange.
