Mandate Pictures, the LA-based indie company which has close ties with Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures, has picked up the remake rights to two movies by Danish director, Ole Bornedal.
The first, which will be produced for Columbia Pictures by Raimi and his partner, Robert Tapert via Ghost House, is The Substitute, in which a sixth grade’s substitute teacher is revealed to be an alien. This is not to be confused with the Tom Berenger film of the same name, in which a substitute teacher is revealed to be a vigilante nutjob, easily replaced by Treat Williams for the sequels.
The second, Just Another Love Story, generated some buzz at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and is a clever thriller about a man who pretends to be the boyfriend of a woman with amnesia – only to find that he must outrun and outwit her real, and very psychotic, boyfriend.
Bornedal has had a movie remade for the US before – the 1997 thriller, Nightwatch, which starred Ewan McGregor. In fact, he directed that himself – there’s no indication, yet, if he will do likewise for either of these movies.