When Did We Start Immediately Remaking U.K. Movies?
Filed under: Drama, Deals, Scripts, Remakes and Sequels
Remakes are inevitable. I know, I know. But at least when the remakes are of foreign-language films, I can rant whilst understanding that they're spoon feeding the anti-subtitle audience. Lots of people don't like making their eyes watch a scene and read text scrolling along the bottom at the same time. I get it. But since when did English films, as in films from the U.K., get the same treatment? Variety reports that Columbia Pictures has grabbed the rights to the British miniseries Red Riding, and Steve Zaillian is in negotiations to shrink the story into one film while Ridley Scott is spotlit to direct. Miniseries doesn't quite cover it. We're talking about David Peace's quartet of books going into a trilogy of films. Movies directed by Julian Jarrold (Kinky Boots), James Marsh (Man on Wire), and Anand Tucker (Shopgirl). And by the way -- they only premiered this year, and are currently running through the festival circuit. The collection of stories cover the years 1974, 1980, and 1983, and place a fictionalized drama against the backdrop of real-life serial killer cases like the Yorkshire Ripper. This new incarnation, which will be whittled down to one solitary film, will move things to the U.S., and presumably cover Stateside killers.
Yes, there's talent to this remake. Zaillian has penned a whole slew of big-time films from more pulpy fare like Mission: Impossible to the Oscar-winning Schindler's List. Ridley Scott has brought us Alien, and Blade Runner, and American Gangster. But their talent doesn't supplant other English-language filmmaking. Is this what we can look forward to now? Every single thing being remade by the creme de la creme of Hollywood? God, I'm half expecting that the future will bring us not only remade U.K. productions, but remade indies too.
The Internet might "bring us all together," but Hollywood still does whatever it can to create a nice U.S. bubble. Anyone have a pin?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-15-2009 @ 1:00PM
tetsuo said...
The UK consists of 4 different countries.
;-)
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10-15-2009 @ 2:00PM
pete thomson said...
If you have seen the excellent BBC 6prt series of State Of Play then the remake is averagely terrible and David Morissey is on record saying he will never see it. John Sim is excellent as the reporter whilst Russell Crowe is just fat!! It lacked depth was contrived and simplistic. I can't see even Ridley Scot managing to create the Red Riding Triology with all the pitch black bleakness of the original set against the recession hit Yorkshire Moors about a corrupt police force, burning gyspey caravans, sexual abuse and a dead girl who gets Swan wings sown into her back by a mad Catholic. Why not just watch the original instead? Oh hang on its because there's no money in that and most Americans cant deal with accents !!
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10-15-2009 @ 2:03PM
martisco said...
Another excellent UK series (also starring David Morrissey, and an evil, vaguely gay Timothy Dalton) that got ruined by Hollywood was "Framed." First they savagely cut the UK version down for U.S. TV, then they went ahead and remade it into a soppy U.S. version.
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10-15-2009 @ 2:33PM
Mike said...
State of Play all over again. Take a great mini-series that used it's running time to build character, story, etc. Whittle it down to two-hours. Throw in big name American stars and screenwriter(s), remove whatever made it relevant or exciting. Then dumb it down for the US masses. That was State of Play in a nutshell, and I see the Red Riding Trilogy getting the same treatment.
And I may be in the minority but I don't think Zallian is not that good of a screenwriter. Oh, he goes after pedigree material, and the A-listers love him. But his work I have found to be overly bombastic, kind of pleased with how Big and Important it is. Or thinks it is. American Gangster is the perfect example. And his own film, All the Kings Men takes all of the bombast and self-importance to the nth degree.
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10-15-2009 @ 3:06PM
Austin B. said...
I don't understand why Hollywood keeps up this process of remaking British mini-series as single features when A) as we all seem to be in agreement, they are of poor quality, especially compared to the original, and B) they're always box office failures. So, why waste so much time and money making an inferior product that fails to make money? Wouldn't Hollywodd have at least picked up on that?
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10-15-2009 @ 3:43PM
Jen Yamato said...
Incidentally, the Red Riding trilogy is playing AFI Fest in LA!
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10-16-2009 @ 4:03PM
lola said...
Aren't they also remaking "Death at a Funeral" - a movie that only came out a couple years ago - along with a cinematic treatment of the miniseries "Lost in Austen", which is - I believe - less than a year old?
*shakes head*
There are so many mediocre movies from the last seventy years that had potential to be so much better. You would think that moviemakers would jump at the chance to take a crack at film that they always thought would be so much better if just such-and-such or so-and-so were different.
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