Footloose Returns!

Kenny Loggins, prepare to reap the royalties because your greatest toe-tapping, cheesy tune is heading back to the screen in a reinvention of the 1984 super hit Footloose as a full-scale feature film musical. The souls responsible for bringing Chicago to Oscar glory, executive producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, have decided to unearth the kitch classic of our youth and shamelessly exploit its hugely popular soundtrack. The whole new version will see the actors not only rivalling good old Kevin Bacon in the dancing stakes but also belting out the tunes themselves. "This is going to have a more experimental feel and will be closer in tone to Moulin Rouge than Chicago" said Zadan, whose very first producing credit was on the original Footloose. Keeping the originals' wonderfully cheesy tale of a city boy landing up in a village where rock music and dancing are illegal, the new feature will definitely include such 80s pop greats as "Let's Hear It For The Boy" and might – Empire Online secretly hopes – even make space for Bonnie Tyler's so-bad-it's-good anthem, "Holding Out For A Hero." But is this just another case of Hollywood pathetically plundering their archive? Zadan insists not. "We'll use the same premise, but write a new script that will use new film techniques to make a dynamic musical," he commented. "We'll find a young cast that sings and dances, and the original songs will have brand new arrangements that will make them more appropriate for a contemporary audience." Kenny Loggins appropriate for a contemporary audience? Stranger things have happened.