Yup, it's another horror remake. We must be running out of movies with name recognition now, surely. Dreamworks' Fright Night however, does seem like it might be potentially be taking some interesting directions. Late last year it was revealed that Buffy and Mad Men screenwriter Marti Noxon was at work on the script, and now it seems, courtesy of the LA Times, that we have a director, in the form of Craig Gillespie.
Gillespie directed the so-so Billy Bob Thornton vehicle Mr Woodcock, and the offbeat Ryan Gosling inflatable woman madness that was Lars and the Real Gir****l, indicating that, as in the original, the studio are very much looking for quirky and funny to go alongside the scary. He also directed and produced episodes of The United States of Tara, so already has a working relationship with Dreamworks.
As an aside,Shock Til You Drop are also reporting a funky early angle suggested for the film. In its original form, Fright Night is about a horror fan who suspects there's a vampire living next door and turns to washed-up horror star Roddy McDowell for help. Shock claim that the idea this time around is that the original Fright Night exists as a film within the film, with our hero seeking out its original vampire star Chris Sarandon. All very po-mo and meta (although to be fair, Fright Night was on that territory long before Scream). Whether Noxon has kept that angle is unclear. And it would, of course, rather depend on Chris Sarandon wanting to be involved...