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The Creature from the Black Lagoon Remake Has Legs

by Kevin Powers
May 5, 2008
Source: ShockTillYouDrop.com

Refreshingly, the latest news in the world of remakes isn't coming from the '80s. Instead, we get word of some needed wind in the sails of the long-discussed update of the 1954 classic, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. The project has floated around for more than 10 years now and passed through the hands of such greats at Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro. STYD brings us news that not only is the project on a solid path towards release next year, but good headway has already been made on the production.

"The Creature has been designed, we've spent six months designing him," director Breck Eisner told STYD. An Amazonian location has also already been chosen. too. "There's this place called the Forest of Mirrors, because there are so many lagoons on a thousand mile green carpet river, and we found the lagoon we're going to shoot in." Joining Eisner is Gary Ross as the screenwriter, who is son to one of the original authors, Arthur Ross.

This is all seemingly great news for the project, but I wonder what the end result will be. Aside from the whole inescapable dodginess associated with remakes, you have to admit that it's not an easy challenge to scare audiences nowadays, especially with a landscape that has been traversed many times since the '50s. Everything from Anaconda to Primeval has tried its hand at the doomed-jungle-creature-expedition with very mixed results. This is only to say that we're a bit familiar with the material from the start, so it feels like Ross and Eisner have some work ahead of them to avoid getting caught in the same mundaneness created by those others.

Eisner's comments go a long way toward assuaging these concerns, however. "It will deliver action and excitement, but I want it to be scary. The Creature was scary when it first came out in '54 - it's not scary today - but that's what updating means to me, updating the tone of the original. We went top shelf on it. It's very faithful to the original, but updated." Eisner has also said of the project, "We see it as an aggressive sci-fi horror film in the vein an Alien or like John Carpenter's The Thing. We want to elevate the source material."

As for casting, there's little news in that regard so far. Apparently there's rumor that Bill Paxton has been cast as the lead, but I question whether that's true. Paxton seems pretty comfortable in his Mormon shoes (HBO's "Big Love") and hasn't exactly been seen in anything dark/action-like in some time. Brian Steele is supposedly taking on the Gillman. Now that is one creaturific dude. Steele has been in a number of genre-appropriate projects, playing characters in Underworld, Resident Evil and the upcoming Hellboy II.

So is this finally a remake we can get excited about?

Filed under Movie News

From around the web:

http://movieguyreviews4u.blogspot.com Ryan

I'm for it.
http://www.thestopbutton.com Andrew Wickliffe

This is Eisner's follow-up to Sahara, right? That says everything. And wasn't Bill Paxton attached back in the late 1990s, when Ron Howard was directing...
Bob

It's a classic, leave it alone.
http://www.williammize.com William Mize

Remaking a great movie such as The Creature From The Black Lagoon makes the baby Jesus cry. And I'm not feeling too good myself.
wm

What The FUCK for??!!! Man, this shit is boring, what a real drag. I think they should remake Raiders of the Lost Ark. It can be way better with all the CGI out now. ReCOCKulous!!!!!
wm

If it's not scary today, then don't fucking watch it. Watch something else that's scary Eisner, like Saw Part 12. Fucking hack. HAHAHAHAHA
http://www.firstshowing.net Alex Billington

May I be the first to say... I'd love to see this remake! I don't exactly know why, but maybe it's because Creatue from the Black Lagoon is so so far off of my movie radar (no I wasn't alive in 1954) that I just don't have any attachment to it. Thus... I'd love to see it come back 54 years later revamped in some badass freaky way! I mean, the kind of things they could do to this to make it fit in with todays monsters movies could really kick ass... I don't think it's right to go around all day long and say EVERY movie that was made previously is a "classic" that shouldn't be remade... This is one of the few that I feel could use a remake and could result in a classic for a new generation!
Glenn

I can't wait and hope they do a good job with this remake! I would also love to see remakes of 1950/60's classic's such as "The Beast From 20.000 Fathoms", "The Monster That Challanged The World" and "THEM" What great movies they really are!!!
http://firstshowing.net james roberts

lets face hollywood will remake all movies sooner or later because original ideas just aren't coming in.also u can fool with story add new special effects and have a new audience today.beep there is your reason for remakes.
velociraptor

I think they should remake it, because the creature in the original film looks kind of corny, but they shouldn't ruin it.
Mark

There are hundreds, if not thousands of really entertaining short stories and novels out there which have never been adapted to film. The fact that film makers these days are obsessed with remaking successful films which have become favorites indicates a real lack of self respect, imagination, and/or a desire to make memorable films. It really is disappointing.