'Videodrome' remake gets a director at Universal
Adam Berg moves from commercials to a remarkably uncommercial title for his first film
Why do I have a sneaking suspicion there's been at least one conversation about 3D regarding the 'Videodrome' remake?
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I do not envy Adam Berg.
Many first-time feature directors are cutting their teeth on found footage films or remakes these days, simply because that's so much of what is being produced. It's a tough spot to be in.
On the one hand, you get a guaranteed greenlight, and you know the studio is going to promote the movie because it's an investment for them. These remakes are about extending the copyright on something. They're about keeping intellectual property in circulation. They are expensive marketing campaigns to sell the original in a super-deluxe home video edition. They are business, pure and simple, and as such, you know the studio is going to put a certain amount of muscle into making sure people see the movie.
But on the other hand, you are competing with another film before you ever roll a frame of film. You've got this original film out there, and audiences have whatever relationship they have with that film. If they love it, they might hold that against you. If they hate it, they might never give your film a chance. The percentage of great remakes to uninspired remakes is daunting, to say the least, and I think when you tackle a title that has a devoted fanbase, you're really daring fate.
Berg is a visual wizard. His ad for Philips, "Carousel," is one of the most remarkable visual feats of recent memory. I'm really interested to see what he does with a feature film at this point. "Videodrome" is a movie I adore, a major step for David Cronenberg, and as personal a horror film as we got in the '80s from anyone. The underlying themes of the film have only become more timely in the years since it was released, and next year will be the 30th anniversary. It helps for me to remember that when I contemplate what screenwriter Ehren Kruger might have done with the material.
Here's "Carousel," the short film that put Berg on the map:
Without any specific insight into the approach, I'm certainly not going to naysay this project. Berg is talented enough to make me want to see what he can do. And while the bar is set very very high by the hallucinatory original film, I've always heard from people who read Cronenberg's early drafts of the script that they felt like the film was just a fraction of his overall vision. I think there's room to take the ideas of information smuggled into our DNA via the media we ingest and really run with them. Is Kruger the right guy to pull it off?
We'll see. Right now, Berg is just in conversations with the studio, and not officially attached. It's a long way from this to a greenlight, so this is still a hypothetical, but an extremely intriguing one.
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August 22, 2012 at 8:58PM EST Reply to CommentRIP anything sacred to '80s kids.
Eyes No movie is or can be sacred. But whoever puts themselves in competition with great filmmaking shouldn't expect a free pass. I agree completely with Drew there.
August 23, 2012 at 12:18AM ESTBesides, Videodrome wasn't in most people's canon of cool (especially "80s kids" - it was a box office disaster) for a long time. Whatever cred it has gained since is a reflection of its own merits, together with the fact that most genre movies made these days can't hold a candle to it.
/3rt '80s kids usually were seeing films they had no business watching and that includes some of the PG/PG-13 stuff when parental guidance was strongly suggested.
August 23, 2012 at 11:28AM ESTreno
August 22, 2012 at 9:05PM EST Reply to CommentVideodrome? Will it all be about haunted youtube videos or something? Why not the Brood? It actually would make sense in modern times, maybe even more plausible than it was when it was made.
Bunny
August 22, 2012 at 9:42PM EST Reply to CommentThat short film is kind of a hack job in itself. It watches like a reel of 'spot the references'... Halo 3
'Believe' ads, Dark Knight Rises, Hard Boiled, Swordfish, etc...
I'll keep an open mind until film footage starts making the rounds, but Berg is already starting in the red for me based on that short clip.
nick_r Yeah, you'd think they'd just hire the director of the Halo "Believe" ads since it's basically the same style -- but hey, the guy who directed those ads is busy making Snow White movies and cheating on his wife with Kristen Stewart. (Yep. It's that guy.)
August 22, 2012 at 10:18PM ESTnick_r
August 22, 2012 at 10:13PM EST Reply to CommentYou know what's so frustrating -- all it would take is ONE studio to announce it's no longer doing remakes, and the rest would follow suit within a second. But as long as they're all doing it, they're all going to do it. And at this point it's completely apparent that it really doesn't matter what the original was or what kind of money it made.
I wish I had a time machine so I could make an obscure low-budget movie in 1985 and then come back today and get the reboot greenlit.
mmcb105 I think if one studio announced that it wouldn't do remakes, all the other studios would laugh as they counted their money. The only way Hollywood will stop eating itself is if viewers stop paying for dinner.
August 22, 2012 at 10:54PM ESTmgrabois
August 23, 2012 at 12:37AM EST Reply to CommentI haven't seen Videodrome since it came out. I remember being totally freaked out at the FX in that, in particular some of the "body/VCR" scenes. I no longer remember what the movie is about, but that still sticks with me.
That Werewolf Guy
August 23, 2012 at 2:34AM EST Reply to CommentTomorrow nine new movies are arriving at American movie theatres. None of them is a remake. That's not an exception, it's pretty much the norm, but nobody seems to care, as long as we can bitch about the lack of originality Hollywood and how remakes destroy anything.
Eric Payne
August 23, 2012 at 7:56AM EST Reply to CommentDrew,
You must be one of the most generous and warm-hearted people in movie commentary. You lay out the commercial facts of the matter without fear or favour and keep an entirely open mind about the idea of a talented young filmmaker being given a chance to make something really great.
It is laudable. But I struggle to remain quite so sanguine.
As you say, this is about 'keeping intellectual property in circulation', and the film is likely to receive some advertising support because it is an 'investment' for the studio. In that context, do you really think it likely that Mr Berg will be allowed to even attempt to make a film that touchs the coat-tails of the deep, strange, subversive waters into which Cronenberg was wading? Hollywood simply does not make films like Videodrome.
As you point out, it would be jumping the gun to damn the film before it even starts proper pre-production. But it is impossible to ignore the suspicion that this is just yet another excuse for a special effects laden but ultimately empty cash-in.
Burned too many times before.
Patrick I'm getting a Total Recall remake vibe off this project.
August 23, 2012 at 8:19AM ESTBen
August 23, 2012 at 8:25AM EST Reply to CommentI actually think this is an excellent remake choice: good not great original film that was not a box office hit (so they're not messing with perfection or immediately pissing off a large fan group that's very unlikely to spend their dollars at a theatre to see the new version), source material that remains interesting and relevant for the remake's time frame (if anything, David Cronenberg's ideas were way ahead of their time, and real-world technologies and issues with them since 1983 are definitely ripe for exploration), and a genre that can stand some re-imagining if it's done well (horror fits into this, and my main plea for the makers of this film is: make the ideas terrifying and the gore/nudity explicit, we don't need another film that waters down R-rated material to a PG-13 nub like "Total Recall" did). I think the bottom line for this film will be based on more on respect/what it will open up for Adam Berg going forward one than becoming some huge hit--and I assume they're not going to spend an enormous amount of money by today's standards on this project--because the heart of the original was bleak violent nihilism, and an honest remake won't softpedal that.
Eric Payne
August 23, 2012 at 8:46AM EST Reply to CommentDrew,
You must be one of the most generous and warm-hearted people in movie commentary. You lay out the commercial facts of the matter without fear or favour and keep an entirely open mind about the idea of a talented young filmmaker being given a chance to make something really great.
It is laudable. But I struggle to remain quite so sanguine.
As you say, this is about 'keeping intellectual property in circulation', and the film is likely to receive some advertising support because it is an 'investment' for the studio. In that context, do you really think it likely that Mr Berg will be allowed to even attempt to make a film that touchs the coat-tails of the deep, strange, subversive waters into which Cronenberg was wading? Hollywood simply does not make films like Videodrome.
As you point out, it would be jumping the gun to damn the film before it even starts proper pre-production. But it is impossible to ignore the suspicion that this is just yet another excuse for a special effects laden but ultimately empty cash-in.
Burned too many times before.
Alboone
August 23, 2012 at 3:36PM EST Reply to CommentCan somebody remake Nightbreed...please!
/3rt The original is on its way to proper restoration.
August 23, 2012 at 4:44PM ESTEyes
August 24, 2012 at 12:10AM EST Reply to CommentHere are some notes for Mr. Berg. First, exactly which movie are you going to remake? It's been a while since I watched, but if I'm not mistaken, there are at least two cuts. One cut has a scene with Barry Convex explaining that Videodrome was developed from the night vision scopes his company makes for the military. I've seen Videodrome with and without this crucial scene, and with other important differences.
Secondly, you are taking on a story that undermines its own existence from the very first frame. This is a movie about (among other things) the information underground, piracy, corruption, brainwashing, programming, dehumanization, tumors and suicide. I doubt that even Hollywood can turn these themes into marketable commodities. So you'll probably have to throw them out or put them in a corner, which pretty much leaves you with nothing. By the way, you don't have to make movies about nothing, no matter what the men in suits tell you.
Thirdly, can you find actors who are anything like as charismatic as James Woods (and even Debbie Harry) in their prime? Will audiences even show up for anyone who looks halfway adult? Who will look as good waving a cigarette (you'll have to drop that, of course) in uncomfortable talk show scenes, or inserting DVDs (which date your movie instantly) into their body? In the age of social media, there is hardly a single scene that does not have to be completely reimagined for today's audiences. So you have to more or less reinvent David Cronenberg from first principles.
Whatever your approach may be, your light is going to have to outshine Cronenberg's if you want to finish with anything more than cash in the bank. Are you sure that you are up for that?
SOUL EZE
August 26, 2012 at 10:35PM EST Reply to CommentUniversal has decided to do a re-make of"Videdrome" . It just so happens SOUL wrote 2 songs specifically about this movie and here is a small tidbit of one of them.Unfortunately it's "LIVE" and not the best quality but If you have seen the original you'll get the drift. An Awesome film with scenes of the future to come or by now the future that has come and passed. I would LOVE to bring some Metal to the soundtrack for the new film. "Welcome to the New Flesh" by SOUL .....Enjoy! heres the URL for the video check it out ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYEAzK18cT8&feature=share&list=UUpKmPqtn3GCB4TdjAbtxF2Q
Embed code below