Movies
‘Fright Night’ Remake Revived Over at DreamWorks
Sure it’s yet another remake, but this should provide at least a little bit of comfort. “Mad Men” writer-producer Marti Noxon has been hired to pen DreamWorks Studios’ revamp of the 1985 horror comedy Fright Night. Before her work on AMC’s “Mad Men,” Noxon was a writer-producer on the bloodsucker series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel,” so fangs and stakes are in her blood. The new version will keep the comedy-horror tone while modernizing the effects. The original “Fright,” released in 1985, was written and directed by Tom Holland and starred Chris Sarandon, Roddy McDowall and William Ragsdale. Ragsdale played a teenager who discovers his neighbors are vampires. Producers Michael De Luca, Michael Gaeta and Alison Rosenzweig set up the “Fright” project in May. DreamWorks executive Mark Sourian is overseeing for the studio.
Filming is underway in New Jersey on Parker Finn’s remake of Andrzej Żuławski’s 1981 psychological horror movie Possession, and Deadline reports that three new faces have joined the cast.
Madeline Brewer (Cam, “You”), Emory Cohen (Sweetheart, Lords of Chaos), and Nicholas Alexander Chavez (“Grotesquerie“) have joined previously announced cast members Margaret Qualley, Callum Turner, Diego Calva, and Paul Dano.
Parker Finn is writing, directing and producing the new take on Possession.
Just how closely Finn’s update will follow the 1981 cult classic remains to be seen, but the original film starred Isabelle Adjani and Sam Neill as married couple Anna and Mark in Cold War-era West Berlin whose relationship spirals into a supernatural nightmare. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.
Isabelle Adjani’s unforgettable performance, particularly the infamous subway sequence that remains one of horror’s most iconic scenes, helped catapult the 1981 film into cult masterpiece status and remains influential, even as recent as Nell Tiger Free’s turn in The First Omen.
Adjani previously gave the remake, and Qualley’s casting in particular, her blessing.
Producers include Jonathan Fass, Roy Lee, Andrew Childs, and Robert Pattinson. Marc Bienstock will executive produce.