Outlanders! Rumor Mill Says Bousman Wants To Remake 'Children of the Corn'

The most buzzed-about rumor of today -- the kind that will probably become next Thursday's minor Variety story -- is that Darren Lynn Bousman, an emerging king of low-rent horror, will be directing a remake of 1984's Children of the Corn. Bousman is responsible for all the very successful Saw sequels, and seems to be vying for an official membership in the Splat Pack -- a support group of blood, guts and gore filmmakers to help each other get their work made without an NC-17 rating. Children of the Corn is probably one of my favorite horror films, to boot. It's the one that I remember watching in most vivid detail -- aside from The Exorcist -- but only because the film somehow, to my mind, blurred the boundaries between movie screen and reality.

Children of the Corn was based on a Stephen King story, in which one prophetic little boy becomes a Jim Jones Jr. under the noses of the adults in his town; his preachings cause the town children to murder all of the adults so that they can congregate in the cornfields by themselves. The 1984 film, which ramped up the religiously-motivated carnage, starred a young Linda Hamilton and Peter Horton. Bousman has not been quoted as officially taking on the project, but IESB says that their sources gave them the green light to report. IESB also called Bousman's agents at Endeavour, who responded with an awkward "no comment." Next on Bousman's to-do list, is of course, Saw IV, so don't look for Children in the immediate future, if it happens at all.