Jacob's Ladder will get the remake treatment

[The Straight Story]

JACOB'S LADDER messed up my childhood. I snuck a VHS copy of the movie from a family friend and proceeded to watch the hellish hallucinations of Jacob Singer with a less than full understanding of the film's plot and twist ending. All I know is those eyeless doctors f*cked up my nightmares for a good long time. Visiting the film later in life, I found Adrian Lyne's movie to be incredibly depressing, slowly paced, but beautifully filmed.

Well, time to shake all that up because JACOB'S LADDER is getting a remake. The Hollywood Reporter says MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN screenwriter Jeff Buhler will write the remake for producers Michael Gaeta and Alison Rosenzweig. Gaeta and Rosenzweig produced the 2011 take on FRIGHT NIGHT and are working on a remake of the Mickey Rourke/Robert De Niro cult classic ANGEL HEART.

While the Tim Robbins film told the story of a Vietnam veteran experiencing hallucinations that may or may not be real, the new film may deviate substantially from that story.

The producers are looking to make something more akin to an homage and not mimic the original. The plan is to contemporize the story with new situations and characters but still maintain a story that examines issues and poses existential questions.

http://www.joblo.com/movie-news/jacobs-ladder-will-get-the-remake-treatment

[Tobin S.]

1. It must not pay to be original now days.

[Chan790]

2. It doesn't.

Movies are all remakes or sequels. Video games as a genre are dominated by sequels. Any time someone creates something with success in music or books, the copycats are out within months. I was in Target last month and they had an entire book aisle of knock-offs of 50 Shades

Creativity is stunted because audiences are stunted. Creativity is not rewarded but shunned as deviating from the formula of success. It makes me hate writing some days to know that I'm going to get notes back from producers telling me that my biopic of Nathan Hale needs bain sidhe and my love story script they want me to rewrite imagining Seth Rogen in the lead, needs fart jokes and light bondage inflicted by a young vaguely-European aristocratic billionaire.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

3. They'll try to turn it into a comedy.

They always do.