Perhaps it was inevitable. With the entire world going ga-ga for those Wall-E trailers, and remarking how much that li'l bundle of robotic cuteness resembles 80s icon Johnny Five, from Short Circuit and its sequel (of which least said, soonest mended), maybe a remake was unavoidable. In any case, Dimension Films has bought the rights, and set the original writers to work on an update.
The story, for those of you too young to remember / not well-versed in dodgy 80s kid flicks, concerns an experimental military robot loaded with nuclear weaponry, who's struck by lightning during a trainnig exercise and develops a personality. Going on the run, he falls in with a critter-loving peacenik and renounces warfare - although it's not going to be quite that easy with the military chasing their asset. His scientist creator also runs after him, falling in love with the peacenik and living happily ever after with their new robot buddy.
The plan is that the new film will have the same plot, but factor in advances in technology and, presumably, the fact that people are worried nowadays about terrorists under the bed rather than Reds. On the bright side, you've got to hope that Fisher Stevens' caricatured Indian scientist is thoroughly forgotten this time.
Starring the none-more-80s combo of Ally Sheedy and Steve Guttenberg, the original was kinda fun, its sequel kinda racist and the franchise itself hardly oft-lamented. But with Wall-E about to restart the robot crazy (we're saying), perhaps now is the perfect time to revisit it. And make it, y'know, better.
Original writers Brent Maddock and SS Wilson are aboard the remake, which Bob Weinstein's Dimension Films is producing. Bear in mind that, since Short Circuit, the screenwriting duo wrote terrific B-movie Tremors (which gives them a free pass for having written the lacklustre **Wild Wild West **as well) and maybe this will be fun. Right? But we'd still rather see Wall-E.