Filmstalker: Fright Night remake killed

The planned remake of Fright Night has been cancelled, thank the lord. The eighties horror film which I remember featuring the immortal line "oh, you're so cool Brewster" was to receive a modern day remake with some drastic changes in storyline.

It seems that the project has been going on for some time and it's gone through three different rewrites of the script, with initial word being that they wanted to remake it in name only, oh dear, another classic film destroyed.

Fright Night told of how a teenager found out that a vampire moved in across the road from his house and he tries to persuade his favourite TV star, a faded has been who hosts a late night monster series and touts himself as a monster killer, to help him destroy the creature.

It's a great fun film, and starred a good lineup including Chris Sarandon and Roddy McDowall as the most memorable names.

So it's great news that it's not being remade now as we hear through ShockTillYouDrop that the idea has been scrapped. One would think that after the third script rewrite they would have thought it wasn't worth it, actually they should have thought that from the very beginning and scrapped it before it began, but come the latest attempt it was too much trouble.

All fans of the original can breathe a sigh of relief, and if you haven't seen it already then you should.

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Thank goodness for that! Fright Night's one of my favourite vampire films - I was horrified to hear they were thinking of changing the story completely. I love Peter Vincent (he was an inspiration for a character in a short I did called Attack of the Zombie Vampires) - and of course vampire Jerry Dandridge who was very cool when I saw it in the Eighties, though looks really dated now!

Posted by: katherine | January 8, 2009 9:49 AM

an alternative venue could be an ancient theatre which uses ancient puppets to entertain its guests: like a special audiotium…
(apparently ancient puppets existed before actors and theatre… )
this could make for a more unusual reimaging of the original whereby the actors are partially controlled in a puppet way within the movie(ref labyrinth 1986…)scenes have more dimension things move in a unpredictable way.. locations vary from lush hotels to desert regions of the ancient world? ref (last temptation of christ 1988)

a more ambitious project to show character vunrablity / to show super hero agilities coupled with more adult unknown aspects to the picture?
hence magic is involved to hide or project character vunrabilities add depth to dream sequences sub plot what makes a vampire ?…
does the vampire know how to contain his lust for Amy? is his behaviour controlled in a particular way? which suggests he is under control by an alternative source outside the traditional sphere of human behavour is there a conspiracy (behind the scenes) to get the vampire to behave in a specific way?
i.e shakespearean or is there some kind of invisible thread which is running the show like a demonic vapire puppet master?

possible title could be simply: fright night theatre? fright night prequal… more intellectual? yet with an entertaining dimension?

Posted by: gareth | March 15, 2009 10:27 PM

is it rumoured Holly Valance for the lead of Amy will be approached when the remake eventually goes into production?

Posted by: gareth | May 7, 2009 12:35 PM

I don't think that any casting has been talked about at all for the film and until a director is on board.

Posted by: Richard Brunton | May 8, 2009 12:07 AM