remake

So what do you do if you are a Hollywood studio and the sequel to a popular movie was a bomb? You make another sequel, of course! That's what they are doing with the Riddick movies. Pitch Black enjoyed some success and garnered a cult following, but the sequel The Chronicles of Riddick was seen as a critical failure. Perhaps they want to see if they can do even worse, but a third film called simply Riddick is in the works.

You won't be surprised that other science fiction film projects that are coming our way include a remake of Escape from New York. There isn't much word on which direction they are taking with the film, but you can probably expect lots of things will blow up.

More promising is an announced remake of the forgotten Disney sci-fi movie The Black Hole. If you're going to remake a movie, at least take a bad one and make it better.

Weirdest of all the new movie projects I've read about lately is a science fiction adaptation of the Herman Melville classic Moby Dick. Did some film producer mishear Philip K. Dick instead of Moby Dick?

If you want to track down more promising science fiction films than those, check out the website of the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. There are some interesting new and old films there that look to be worth watching.

The V remake premieres tomorrow. Critics have been given an advance look at it in order for them to write reviews that will drum up interest in the show.

I've read some of them and opinion is mixed. Many say that it is an exciting remake of the show and an improvement on the campy original. They seem to be taking things a bit more seriously, sort of the way the new Battlestar Galactica was a more realistic show than the 70s show that shared the same name. While those reviews were postive, others weren't so enthusiastic.

I never really watched the original so I won't have any expectations coming into this one, but by the time I actually get around to watching the pilot, it will probably already be cancelled. I'll get to it as soon as I finish watching the last season of BSG and watching last year's Doctor Who episodes that I never had time to view.

Peter Jackson says that movie fans are fed up with a lack of original ideas. He made the comment at Comic-con recently while pushing District 9, an original SF movie which he produced.

The movie is getting a lot of praise from critics, but it probably would never have happened if the movie adaptation of Halo that they were working on had fallen through. At least something good came from the demise of that project.

In other news, Ridley Scott will direct a prequel to Alien, the star of The Hurt Locker may be the next Mad Max and Warner Bros. is considering an update of the classic pirate movie Captain Blood as a science fiction film. What was Jackson saying about a lack of original ideas in Hollywood?

It seems like Hollywood isn't wasting time when it comes to remakes these days. Word is out that there are plans to update Total Recall. Shouldn't they wait another decade or so? They are also redoing the Predator movie. Rumour has it that the original star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has been offered a role in the latter movie.

For more genre movie projects, head over to Den of Geek to see their impressive list of upcoming films. They don't list just a few obvious projects like Avatar, but an impressive list of 36 films, most of which you probably are not aware. Amazingly, many of them seem to be original stories and not remakes or adaptations.

Meanwhile, an indie film company recently announced that it would release its movie online before offering it for sale on DVD, something that they claim is a first. I guess releasing a film direct-to-web is today's version of direct-to-video.

This week's genre movie release is a lot more family friendly than last week's Watchman movie. It's Disney's effort to kickstart its Witch Mountain franchise with a movie called Race to Witch Mountain. It's not exactly a sequel to the previous movies in the series and it isn't exactly a remake. It's somewhere in the middle.

The reviews have not been great, but by the time the box office cash and DVD sales are tallied up, I'll bet it makes a lot more money than Watchman does, just for the fact that it's rated G where Watchman is a restricted movie which automatically cuts into its box office potential.

Of course, I'm comparing apples to oranges since the movies have just about zero similarity other than I'm lumping them together as "genre" movies.

What's interesting about Watchman was to see how it would fare with a mainstream audiences compared to the fanboys who worshipped the graphic novel upon which it was based. Apparently, it's not going so well. I think a lot of people were expecting a Spider-Man/Fantastic Four sort of experience, but are finding out it's nothing like that. While it led at the box office last weekend, going forward it doesn't look like it will do so well. I'm guessing its run in the theatres will be relatively brief. Oh, well. It's not like there would be a sequel.

Back to Witch Mountain for a moment. In anticipation of the movie, I hauled out the originals and screened them for my progeny. They both really liked Escape to Witch Mountain, but thought Return from Witch Mountain was not as good, although enjoyed it anyway.  I guess that old Disney magic still holds up after all these decades.

Did April Fool's Day arrive early this year? What else would explain talk of a book, and possibly movie, that would transform Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice into a zombie story? The alleged title of such a farce is to be Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Ugh.

To make matters even more ridiculous, Elton John is talking about combining Jane Austen and the Predator movies to make a film of his own called Pride & Predator. Double Ugh

Slightly more serious is talk that director Robert Rodriguez will be reviving the Predator series of movies. I hope he gets to it before Elton John does, although the two might want to get together since Rodriguez did a pretty credible job with a zombie movie of his own called Planet Terror that was part of the Grindhouse double feature that paired him with Quentin Tarentino and his movie Death Proof.

While talk of a Predator revival is just rumour, Rodriguez will be writing and directing another science fiction for release next year. It's a futuristic thriller called Nervewrackers.

The move to revive the 80s cult, sci-fi show V has come to pass as ABC has officially greenlit a reboot of the series. I suppose the network was inspired by Sci Fi's success with their resurrection of Battlestar Galactica, but I have my doubts that they will be able to equal its success.

Sci Fi hopes that their BSG spinoff will retain some of the original show's audience, but the two sound as different as night and day. Producer Ronald Moore dished a few details on the new show with Sci Fi Wire.

Not to be outdone, Showtime is developing a science fiction show of its own which is to be called Syns. The series will be about synthetic humans. Sounds different at least.

A rumour that will make the teen girls happy and seems like a no-brainer is to adapt the vampire story Underworld as a television series.

What I want to know is will The X-Files ever make a comeback to the small screen?  Despite the lacklustre results of the recent X-Files movie, show star David Duchovny still wants to believe.

It's rare to hear news that a Hollywood studio has abandoned a planned sequel to a series of films, but word on the street is that Disney is dropping the Dawn Treader movie which would have been the third Narnia film. The report cites high production costs and a lower return on the last movie. Maybe the public is finally getting bored of endless sequels and rehashing of old stories. Nah.

Studios are still plundering other source material for movies so they don't think the public is getting bored with their lack of imagination. Here are two examples in the pipeline that actually sound like they could be fun. One is an animated/live-action adaptation of the Stanislaw Lem story The Futurological Congress and the other is a take on Homer's classic story Odyssey which will star Brad Pitt. I guess Troy was such a hit that they want to do it again.

In other movie news, the Watchmen movie, which is set for a march release from Warner Brothers, is still on track, but a court has ruled that 20th Century Fox owns the copyright to the film. I'm sure the movie will still be released, but there will a whole lot of litigation while the two studios fight over who owes who how much money.

Now we're sure to be invaded by aliens. The producers of the remake of the Day the Earth Stood Still are planning on beaming it into space. However, we may be safe because the extraterrestrials may just conclude that it's evidence that no intelligent life exists in our solar system, judging from the early reviews of the movie which are baaad.

I had my suspicions that it might be craptastic based on the volume of hype that I've been seeing about the movie. The film's star, Keanu Reaves, has been interviewed by just about everybody for the film. Here's one sit-down with the Boston Herald and another with canada.com. Even the director's been talking up the movie.

One of the more interesting articles I read about the movie is from IO9 that looks at some of the science behind the re-imagined robot Gort. He sounds cool, but probably not as cool as the original.

No  matter how terrible the reviews, I'll still probably check this movie out just to see how Hollywood approached the remake of a beloved science fiction classic.

Need more evidence that Hollywood has run out of ideas? Here is an astonishing list of 84 comic books being adapted for the big screen. Admittedly, not all of these projects will see the light of day, but the fact that there are so many boggles the mind. I suppose you could compile a list of 84 novels being adapted as movies, but I'd wager that they are diverse enough that none of them would feature stories of people with superpowers and tight-fitting uniforms.

But wait, there's more! Hollywood is also considering remakes for no fewer than 12 classic science fiction movies. Star Trek isn't even on the list and that's surely one remake that's got the purists suffering from anxiety attacks.

If they're going to make adaptations, why not try adapting something new? There are plenty of great SF books that have never been filmed. Here's a list of 5 books that would make great movies. I'm sure you can think of more.

Thankfully, there are still people out there making original SF movies. The writer/director of the acclaimed film Brick is busy at work on an original science fiction script and the indie band The Flaming Lips has made its own scifi film called Christmas on Mars.