Remakes

A loyal reader has brought up a tidbit that I wasn't planning on addressing, but now may as well write about. This bit of news is the scheduled remake of Stephen King's It. I get a lot of horror new on a daily basis, so it's hard for me to remember that everydaay, average non-horror watching folks don't know what movies are up on the remake chopping block. Before I take a specific look at It, here are some movies getting remade soon:

Funhouse
Plan 9 From outer Space (considered by many ot be the worst movie of all time)
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Monster Squad

Scanners
Escape from New York
Martyrs
The Orphanage
Let the Right One In
The House on Sorority Row
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (again)
A Nightmare on Elm Street
Hellraiser
Faces of Death
Evil Dead

Child's Play
The Birds
Children of the Corn
The Wolfman
Re-Animator
Predator
The Thing
Rocky Horror Picture Show

And that's a partial list!  But getting back to It, I'm against the remake because the original mini-series was given the best possible chance to be successful.  There's no way that a theatrical version of It could do well.  The book is 1000 pages long, and the TV version from 1988 had a running time of 198 minutes.  I sat in the movie theater for 191 minutes, but that was a whole different animal.  No one that I know of is going to sit in the movie theater for 3 hours+ for a horror movie.  Why not?  you ask.  I'll tell you.

If the movie is good (unlikely), the production company won't be able to make enough money by having a movie that long.  In order for a movie to make money everyone has to go see it, not just horror fans.  Combine that with the fact that for a 3 hour film there are fewer showings in a day and you're already making less money than on average IF THE MOVIE IS GOOD. If the movie is bad (very likely), then no one's going to watch it anyway, even horror fans.  We'll just wait for DVD. 

Current word is that Tim Curry is being courted to play Pennywise again, but no official news yet on that front.  Here's the major gripe of mine:  The televised mini-series sucked.  I liked the actors, but the production sucked...big time sucked.  It wasn't scary by any standards and didn't do the amazing book any justice at all.  The book is terrifying and great.  It put Stephen King on a pedestal next to Ray Bradbury for me.  They are the two best authors when it comes to writing convincing child characters.

The new movie will blow.  The mini-series had all the time in the world to work with the story and it blew.  The movie will be shorter and therefore even more snipped and cramped and therefore worse in quality.  That's just how I feel.