Movies
They’re Going Back and Fixing ‘The Butterfly Effect’
I thought that the 2004 The Butterfly Effect, the sci-fi thriller starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart, was a pretty awesome movie. I even liked Kutcher’s performance, and would probably watch it again tomorrow if someone offered to pop it on. So, less than ten years since its debut, it’s being remade. It sort of doesn’t make any sense to me, considering the title itself holds no value (who the hell knows what that movie even is?), the concept can be done differently and more unique (without the title), and there’s kind of nothing really that wrong with the original. Seems lazy. But whatever. I’m sick of caring – as long as it ends up good, I’m happy.
Variety reports that FilmEngine and Benderspink are teaming to reboot the film with original writer-director Eric Bress on board to pen the new script. Apparently the writer of the original is out of original ideas?
Kutcher portrayed a character who had the ability to travel back in time and change the present by changing what he had done in his past — but found that changing several childhood traumas created unintended consequences.
Producers are A.J. Dix, Anthony Rhulen, Chris Bender and JC Spink, as they did on the original, along with Film Engine president Navid McIllhargey. No director is yet attached.
The original sci-fi thriller was a solid performer for New Line with a worldwide box office of $96 million on a budget of $13 million along with a pair of direct-to-DVD sequels.
Bress and J. Mackeye Gruber co-directed and co-wrote the original.
Zach Cregger is no stranger to violent movies, with his first two at-bats in the horror genre yielding the films Barbarian and Weapons. But even those movies can’t compete with the level of violence on display in his next movie Resident Evil, he teases in a new chat.
Zach Cregger tells Empire Magazine that Resident Evil is “definitely the most violent thing I’ve done.” He teases, “You gotta go grotesque! I wanted to go all the way.”
“So it’s gnarly. It’s brutal,” Cregger continues. “A very bloody affair.”
He also tells Empire, “Fleshing out what [the Umbrella Corporation is] up to and how the T-virus works, that’s not what this movie is. This movie is about one dude’s journey on foot, fighting monsters. I don’t give a fuck about checking boxes. All I cared about was just telling a fun story. We step on the gas at about eight minutes in and never take our foot off the floor.”
Resident Evil opens in theaters and IMAX September 18 from Sony.
The film is being billed as “a thrilling — and terrifying — reinvention of the Resident Evil franchise” from the mind of visionary filmmaker Zach Cregger (Barbarian, Weapons).
Austin Abrams (Weapons) stars as Bryan, a medical courier who unwittingly finds himself in a non-stop race for survival as one fateful, horrifying night collapses around him in chaos.
Zach Cherry (“Severance”), Kali Reis (“True Detective: Night Country”), Paul Walter Hauser (“Black Bird”), and Johnno Wilson (“Twisted Metal”) round out the cast.