De Luca Gives Update on Fright Night Remake

January 14, 2010

By Rob G.

Waiting on first draft of the script

Back in November, it was announced that Marti Noxon (a writer on Mad Men and Buffy The Vampire Slayer) was tapped to pen a remake of Tom Holland’s beloved vampire flick Fright Night for Dreamworks.

Steve Weintraub over at Collider got the chance to have a lengthy chat with producer Mike De Luca who’s helping shepherd the project. De Luca, who was the former president of production at New Line Cinema back in the early 90’s worked on several genre titles such as Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3 and even scripted Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. It’s safe to say he’s also a fan, so he understands fellow fans trepidation towards a Fright Night remake.

“I get it that remakes are a drag to hear about,” he says. “Iâm on the Internet all the time. I know what they say. Like thereâs no original ideas in Hollywood. I understand the responsibility on the remake front of things because there are fansâ¦you have responsibility I think to the fans of the original and you also have the responsibility to not suck even more than something original because you have so many people expecting you to suck because of the predisposed bias against remakes and stuff.”

“And with Fright Night, with all the romantic vampire stuff going on with The Vampire Diaries and True Blood and Twilight, the most obvious. We thought it would be interesting if, in this atmosphere of the way the vampire is being portrayed right now as a romantic object, under the wire of all that in the culture the real thing moves in next door. And the real thing is a killer. Just a predator. Itâs the shark from Jaws. On the outside itâs a seductive package and it looks like a human being, but itâs just about ripping your throat out and drinking your blood. And introducing that kind of vampire into the current environment.”