You may think that** IRA Zombies** – when it finally splatters all over cinema screens in October 2009 (oh yes! That’s optimistic) – will be the first movie to ever leap forth from Empire’s diseased mind. But you’d be wrong. You see, proper film-maker and TV bloke Rod Lurie, director of The Contender and creator of Commander-In-Chief, used to write for us, see?
So far, though, he’s been pretty straight up in his choices as someone working the other side of the Hollywood fence. Political dramas. Worthy prison-set morality tales. West Wing Zero. You could say that he hasn’t exactly been Rod Lurid.
Until today, that is, when it was announced that Lurie is attached to direct a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s notorious mini-classic (as opposed to a Victoria Mini Classic, which are just scrumptious), Straw Dogs. You know, the one where Dustin Hoffman and Susan George move to rural England, rile the local yokels, she gets raped (but, somewhat controversially, likes it), he gets even (and likes it even more), culminating in a Peckinpah Special: a liberal helping of gore, with a side order of retribution and redemption.
We love Rod here at Empire (stop sniggering at the back, you), but we’ll admit that nothing in Lurie’s back catalogue has prepared us for this. Following in Peckinpah’s footsteps takes some mighty big balls, if you’ll allow us to mix our metaphors, and let’s hope that Lurie is up to the challenge. Well, of course, he learned everything he knows at the HMS Empire, didn’t he? (What’s that? He was just an LA-based freelancer, and probably has never set foot inside Empire Towers? Erm… anyway, we’re claiming him! Hands off!)
Lurie isn’t writing this version of Straw Dogs – that honour goes to Reed Steiner, a scribe on The Shield – but he is producing for Screen Gems, along with Marc Frydman. No word yet on cast (there’s got to be a Dusty cameo, surely!) plot details, but it’s been suggested that the remake will take place in the States, thus almost entirely missing the culture clash/role reversal crux of the original, while we’d be mightily surprised if the rape scene remained intact.