Movies
The Ring Director Mutates ‘The Host’ Into a Remake
I know the lot of you think Magnolia Pictures’ Korean monster flick The Host is a masterpiece, but I’m going to stand firm in my belief that the film is not only overrated, but incredibly flawed. The idea of remaking the film sounds like a good idea to me, especially if they can find a way to differentiate it from CLOVERFIELD. We can debate this all day, but I know have a wild card in the fact that Universal Pictures just tapped the awesome Gore Verbinski (The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean) to produce the creature feature. Read on for the skinny and share your thoughts below.
Universal Pictures and Gore Verbinski will remake the 2006 Bong Joon-ho-directed Korean thriller “The Host,” with commercials director Fredrik Bond making his feature helming debut and Mark Poirier (“Smart People”) to pen the script.
Story follows a town terrorized by a giant mutant squidlike creature hatched by toxins that flow into a nearby river from a military base. When the creature grabs a little girl, her dysfunctional family must band together to rescue her.
Verbinski will produce with Vertigo’s Roy Lee and Doug Davison, along with Paul Brooks.
The film, originally titled “Gwoemul,” did record-breaking business in its theatrical run in South Korea.
Bond has directed campaigns for Nike, Adidas and Levi’s. He and Verbinski had been looking for a project to do together, and Bond said he embraced the opportunity to mix a larger-than-life monster with a heartfelt family drama.
“It processes a few genres together, and visually it feels close to the stuff I’ve made over the last few years in commercials, the tonality of humor and the scale,” Bond said.
Verbinski set up the project through Blind Wink Prods., the company he formed at Universal, where he is developing to direct an adaptation of the vidgame “Bioshock.”
Write your own review of THE HOST
A contemporary reimagining of H.P. Lovecraft’s short story Herbert West: Reanimator is on the way, and Deadline has unveiled the first look at the new Herbert West and the pathologist drawn to his orbit.
Adam Simon (The Haunting in Connecticut, “Salem”) and Tim Metcalfe (The Haunting in Connecticut, Kalifornia) penned the script. The original screenplay and storyline come from Jade Sandberg Wallace.
Michael Grossman (“The Originals”, “Pretty Little Liars”) directs.
The new images introduce star Joseph Morgan (“Vampire Diaries“), who plays “brilliant surgeon and scientist Herbert West, who is obsessed with creating a serum to reanimate the dead.” Katie Cassidy (Speed Demon) stars opposite as the pathologist with a troubled past who joins his efforts.
Together, they prove that conquering death may be the ultimate sin against life itself.
The film’s official synopsis: “As a child, Herbert West watches his father Peter reanimate his dead mother Judith in a secret basement lab — only for Judith to mortally wound Peter and nearly kill Herbert before Peter shoots her. The trauma leaves its mark on Herbert, but so does one final image: his mother’s finger, twitching after death. Thirty years later, Herbert West is a brilliant, secretive surgeon still chasing his father’s obsession.
“Pathologist Kate Locke arrives in town and is drawn into his orbit — first through a spark at a hospital fundraiser, then through his secret lab, where he reveals a serum capable of reanimating severed tissue. Kate, hiding a dark past of her own, is thrilled rather than horrified, and moves into West’s mansion to work alongside him. Their early experiments on a cadaver succeed only briefly. West concludes that dead tissue is the problem — they need something fresher.”
Supporting cast includes Scott Aiello, Ira J Amyx, Randall Newsome, Emma Reinagal, James D. Bryce, Kathryn A Bentley, Jack Lancaster, Amy Holland Pennell, John Pierson, Mindy Shaw, Eric Dean White, Tristan Wilder Hallet, Adrienne Lamping, Aaron Crippen, and Drew Patterson.
Makeup artist Jeff Lewis (“Star Trek: Voyager,” “Star Trek: Enterprise”) and cousin Roger Lewis are heading the production via their newly established Woodlake Entertainment.
Lovecraft’s short story, first serialized in Home Brew magazine in 1922, is the first among his works to mention the fictional Miskatonic University. It was most famously adapted into a 1985 horror movie from Stuart Gordon, starring Jeffrey Combs as Herbert West.
Herbert West: Reanimator is set in Alton, Illinois, where production is now underway.
Herbert West: Reanimator. Photo credit: Matt Lief Anderson
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