WesleyStrick Tagged Articles at Cinematical

They started off with Leatherface, which makes sense if you think about it: Horror flicks don't get much more "classic" than TCM. So when Platinum Dunes announced a do-over on Friday the 13th, nobody was all that much surprised. Plus the Dunes boys keep talking about remaking The Birds, so I guess that means all bets are off. So don't act all surprised when you learn that the production company is looking at a spring start date for, yep, A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Producer Andrew Form spilled a few early details at Shock, but here's the part that should keep horror fans (at least partially) sated for the time being: "It's not Freddy cracking jokes. We want to make a horrifying movie. The concept is so scary, don't fall asleep or you'll die. This guy gets you when you're most vulnerable, in your sleep. We love that." Sounds good to me, Andrew.

So not only will the new* Freddy start shooting relatively soon ... it also looks like Platinum Dunes have found themselves a screenwriter in veteran word-maker Wesley Strick, whom the genre fans will remember from Arachnophobia, Cape Fear, Wolf, and Doom.

*And yes, it definitely looks like a NEW Freddy will hit the scene, although the producers seem open to having Robert Englund stop by in some capacity.

Frankly, the news that a screenwriter had been hired to pen the latest installment in a horror franchise would not normally merit much attention.(Other than from the writer's agent and immediate family.) But when we're talking Wesley Strick and A Nightmare on Elm Street, my curiosity soared.

New Line Cinema has hired Strick to create their new version of Nightmare, according to The Hollywood Reporter. One of his first credits was as co-writer of Arachnophobia, Frank Marshall's clever creature feature, followed by Martin Scorsese's heavy-handed remake of Cape Fear, and later Mike Nichols' post-modern Wolf. His other credits include Final Analysis, The Saint, The Glass House and Doom.

While it's always tricky to assign credit or blame based solely on screen credits, I think it's safe to say that Strick has a distinct track record: complex psychological tension, sarcastic humor, and mucho macho boom boom (to coin a phrase for his uber-male characters). I'm not saying that all of these elements succeed in every movie he's had a hand in writing, but I am hopeful that Strick can come up with a fresh twist on Freddy Krueger.

The new Nightmare will retain the high school setting and "delve deeper in the psychology of nightmares and Krueger himself. The plan is to have a dark tone." If the plan is also to forget about a PG-13 rating, so much the better. New Line aims to release the film in time for the 25th anniversary of the original -- which would be November 2009.

There are few bigger names in American history than Martin Luther King, Jr, but his story has never really gotten the big-screen treatment it deserves. Oliver Stone announced a King film in 1998, but negative newspaper articles fearing Stone would deliver another conspiracy movie killed the project. Now we have Soundman, a King project that doesn't sound like a biography at all. Wesley Strick wrote and will direct Soundman, a thriller about the civil rights leader. The film will focus on "a white FBI agent who is saddled with the job of spying on Martin Luther King Jr. but struggles with a crisis of conscience and ultimately heads off an assassination attempt on the civil rights leader's life." The movie starts shooting in Chicago this fall, no casting details have been announced.

Strick hasn't directed since the 2001 TV movie Hitched. I didn't see that one, but I always perk up when I see his name in the credits of a movie. He wrote Arachnophobia, which I loved, as well as the excellent screenplay for Scorsese's remake of Cape Fear, one of my favorites. I'm curious to hear more details about Soundman. Will King be a speaking character in the film or just a plot device seen from afar? My guess is they'll probably go the route of a movie like Bobby, showing you glimpses of King through archival footage and crafty editing. If we ever do get that King biopic, I think Spike Lee is the natural choice. It'd bring a nice symmetry to his Malcolm X, and you know he wouldn't deliver an overly schmaltzy puff piece. But who has the charisma to play MLK? I'd cast Ving Rhames.