Filmstalker: Red Dawn remake gains writer, director

Remember Red Dawn? That's the film about mainland America being invaded by Russian troops and a small group of kids who get caught behind enemy lines as the army advances into America.

However they don't think to sit on their arses doing nothing and piling down hamburgers, oh no, they start up a resistance called The Wolverines and fight back.

It'll be interesting to see where this new version goes, they've hired the writer Carl Ellsworth to adapt the script, he previously wrote television shows with Red Eye, Disturbia and the as yet unfilmed remake script of The Last House on the Left to his name. He's working from a story written by Jeremy Passmore.

Also assigned is a director, Dan Bradley, a stunt co-ordinator on a number of big Hollywood films and a second unit/assistant director on a number of films too. Lately he's covered both roles in the Bourne and Spider-Man series. This is his first all out directors role though.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, it comes from MGM and the two people responsible for the RoboCop remake, Harry Sloan and Mary Parent. Great news is that they plan to keep the idea of the original but update it all to modern day, and there doesn't sound like there's going to be a toning down of where the concept could go, at least not yet according to Ellsworth.

"The tone is going to be very intense, very much keeping in mind the post-9/11 world that we're in...As 'Red Dawn' scared the heck out of people in 1984, we feel that the world is kind of already filled with a lot of paranoia and unease, so why not scare the hell out of people again?"

Red Dawn starred some cool names, Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Charlie Sheen, Jennifer Grey, Harry Dean Stanton, Powers Booth and Lea Thompson. How's that for a cast? I wonder if they'll try and get young recognisable actors for this team of Wolverines?

Here's the trailer for the original film which was pretty bold in its time and took a really interesting concept and had some interesting stars in there too.

The question is where are they going with this one? Terrorist organisation invading a U.S. city? I doubt they would have enough men to occupy America as a whole. Maybe they will stick with Russia?

Comments

Shouldn't this be at the top of the list of films that never need to be revisited? It's not like it needs a CGI remake or better actors or anything like that. It was a product of its time and played on the concerns a lot of us had back then. Do U.S. kids today really fear an invasion and occupation of the U.S. mainland? I seriously doubt it.

Posted by: hap | July 9, 2008 5:26 PM

I couldn't get that either hap, what's a similar threat today? There's no one that could invade the U.S. because of the sheer weight of numbers required in their army.

Perhaps it'll be more isolated. Maybe it'll be a U.S. colony abroad, like in an Arab state, and it's overrun by terrorist factions? However then we're just heading into something that really isn't Red Dawn anymore.

I think it's going to be a tricky one to remake.

Posted by: Richard Brunton | July 10, 2008 9:28 AM