Remake Mania: Are there NO original ideas left in Hollywood?

The news this week that came pouring out of Hollywood made me seriously concerned about the amount of creativity left in Hollywood. Story after story told of yet another remake to be made. First Gore Verbinski announced he wanted to do a new version of Clue. Then Guillermo del Toro, the man with more projects then he has fingers mentions in passing he'd like to redo The Count of Monte Cristo, which was made into a film as recently as 2002. Total Recall, The NeverEnding Story, and Damn Yankees round out the line-up of films announced this week to be getting a new spin. Five movies in one week. I think that's something to be concerned about.

While the original of many of these movies were not very good, they do have something of a cult status. The NeverEnding Story in particular is renowned for having terrified little children for years. Why ruin a good-bad thing? We should count our blessings, I suppose, that studios haven't started cannibalizing classic films. But with rumors swirling last year about a rewrite of Poltergeist being worked on. That's getting dangerously close to genuine classics. I know that a work of art is always supposed to be a work in progress, and these directors think they can improve on what has come before, but sometimes the big wigs in Hollywood need to learn to let sleeping dogs lie.

Vampire Mania Continues

The niche of vampire-fantasy material doesn't look to be running out of steam anytime soon. It's a genre that exploded with popularity with the advent of the Twilight series, the first movie raking it in at the box office despite luke-warm reviews, and the sequel quickly confirmed within a few days of the initial film's release. Its little surprise that studios are latching onto this latest craze and looking to turn out more vampire-related pictures. Last November, it was announced by Variety that producers Michael Birnbaum and Jeremiah Chechik had optioned the House of Night book series, which revolves around a special school for vampires. No word has come on the development of that property in a film, but it most likely isn't coincidence that the decision was arrived at the same month Twilight hit the big screens.

But what is more likely coincidence is the convergence of another pair of vampire-related stories that were announced yesterday. The first is the rumor of villain Morbius appearing in Spider-Man 4. Morbius, for those who have not been initiated into geek-hood, is a scientist who, through an experiment gone awry, takes on vampire-like attributes. Granted, director Sam Raimi makes a fairly solid case for why he wants to incorporate the character into the next film, but is there a chance he was influenced by the recent demand? The second announcement is not directly related to film, but still interesting. Director Guillermo del Toro has apparently written a trilogy of vampire novels that will be released last year. How this man manages to write an "epic" scale trio of novels and turn out films like Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy II: The Golden Army, as well as being booked with directing gigs for the forseeable future, starting with The Hobbit is beyond me, but I will watch with interest to see how well these novels are received.