They’ve already remade The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And The Hitcher. And The Amityville Horror. They’ve got Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Birds on their schedule. So you really shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Platinum Dunes – Michael Bay’s horror-centric production company – has added another remake to its list, in the form of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.
The production shingle, nominally headed up by Bay but run on a day-to-day basis by Drew Form and Brad Fuller, today announced that it was in talks with Paramount to bring a new version of the 1968 horror classic, in which a young woman suspects that she’s been impregnated with the son of Satan, to the big screen.
Now, normally you’d expect Empire to get all uppity and start raging about ‘sacred gems of the horror field’ and ‘can’t they leave well alone’ and ‘how dare they?’ and ‘who do they think they are?’ and ‘it used to be all fields round here’. After all, Platinum Dunes’ record isn’t exactly spotless – each of their remakes so far has been pretty execrable.
However, we’ve long since given up on getting angry over proposed remakes of horror classics – Hollywood is clearly going to do it, regardless of what we think, and besides, some remakes have turned out pretty well (we’re looking at you, Zack Snyder’s Dawn Of The Dead and, to a lesser degree, John Moore’s The Omen).
We’d be lying, though, if we said we weren’t a little concerned over Rosemary’s Baby. The original is, after all, a mood piece rather than a visceral thrill ride, generating its chills through manipulation of atmosphere rather than cat-in-the-fridge jump scares, so it’ll be interesting to see how Platinum Dunes, with its penchant for manufactured thrills and frenetic editing, handles the material. As long as they keep the superimposed demon eyes – one of the scariest things Empire has ever seen – they’re on the right track.
So far, though, the company is saying that it plans to be meticulous with the remake, after having been granted the rights to remake what is, frankly, one of the crown jewels of Paramount’s back catalogue.
No writer is yet attached to the project, and it’s not yet known when it will go forward, what with Platinum Dunes actively working on remakes of Friday The 13th (also a Paramount flick) and A Nightmare On Elm Street. But, like their planned reimagining of The Birds, to which Naomi Watts is attached, Rosemary’s Baby will give one young actress one hell of a part in the titular role made famous by Mia Farrow.
And now, we suppose that the question is... with horror Holy Grails falling by the wayside on a regular basis, does anyone in Hollywood have the balls to tackle The Exorcist?