Though it’s not as if the world was crying out for a remake of Footloose, we’re getting one anyway – but with **Hustle & Flow **director Craig Brewer behind the camera, it’ll hopefully have a little more edge. At least, that’s the idea. Now some new pics from the film have emerged online and you’ll be shocked to see that a couple contain people dancing. No, really!
Yes, the ‘80s tale of the small town that banned hoofing and the young rebel Ren McCormack – Kevin Bacon in the original, Kenny Wormald in this one – who arrives and shake, rattle and rolls the place up.
Talking to USA Today, Brewer said he also wanted to shake up the film, which had stumbled in its early days thanks to the departure of putative stars Zac Efron and Chase Crawford and director Kenny Ortega.
"The project that they wanted to do was like a big dance celebration of Footloose," Brewer says. "I gravitate more toward the conflict between Rev. Moore (Dennis Quaid) and his daughter (Julianne Hough). The relationship between Ren and Willard (Miles Teller)."
And according to producer Craig Zadan, whose credit on the first Footloose in 1984 was his first movie producing job, this is definitely an updated takes on the tale, which switches the locale to a Southern-fried locale instead of the original Midwest setting.
"We built into the story that all the hardships the characters go through are because of the economy," he says. "Ren's father left the family because he had to be the breadwinner, and his mother got sick and died. So he moves in with the family of his uncle, a cars salesman who is struggling. Even the whole issue of religion and the separation of church and state feels very contemporary."
Some of the pics are in the gallery. You can see the rest over at USA Today.
With Wormald, Hough, Dennis, Andie MacDowell, Teller and Ray McKinnon in the cast, Footloose will be out on October 14.