The last time Chris Columbus stepped on to a set (as a director at least, he’s the producer behind more than one upcoming movie), it was to make Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. But while that didn’t exactly lead to a new, Potter-style franchise, he’s staying with strange beings for a future project, agreeing to develop a remake of Korea’s Hello Ghost.
The Korean version was a box office hit last year, which might explain why Columbus has snapped it up as a likely new directing gig.
Hello Ghost follows a lonely bloke who decides he wants to end it all. But after several failed suicide attempts, he starts seeing four spirits – a cigarette-smoking cab driver, a kid with a craving for sweets, a young woman who can’t stop crying an a horny, alcoholic grandfather. Turns out all four have something they need to sort out before they can pass on to the other side.
If the plot sounds familiar at all, that’s because it bears a distinct similarity to the 1993 Robert Downey Jr film Heart and Souls, about a man who has to help four ghosts solve problems to let them enter heaven. Still, even if it does end up as a reboot of that, the statute of limitations on remakes is getting shorter and shorter anyway.
And that doesn’t seem to have put off Columbus: “After watching Hello Ghost I was immediately struck by the film's ability to mix comedy, drama and complex emotional themes," he said in a statement. “Its strong universal storyline translates to any culture, and I'm looking forward to bringing a version of this wonderful story to the English-speaking audience." We'll see if he manages it.