Re: Laverne Cox To Be Frank 'N Furter in TV movie version of 'Rocky Ho
Remaking an
iconic film with such a fervent fan base is a dicey venture whether Frank is a man, a woman, or an animated / CGI character.
It would be like remaking
Gone with the Wind with Brad and Angelina.
Or remaking
The Princess Bride with Robert Pattison and Kristen Stewart.
There are
some remakes that should be left
undone.
GREAT SCOTT! 
How do you know that they couldn't work with those actors? Back in the day of 'classic' Hollywood, the major studios used to remake a lot of things every four to ten years or so (MGM made three versions of
Rose Marie with different stars from each era of the studio in the roles, for example)-and
nobody had problems with them, from critics to moviegoers (and also because nobody, except for a few people, were cinéastes) therefore, remakes could be done with no big problem, and no controversies or cries about memories being spoiled or childhoods being raped. Today, it's as if film has become a sacred religion, with movie theaters becoming the houses of worship (even though they look less like the movie theaters of yesteryear that themselves resembled churches) and so due to the Internet, blog sites, websites devoted to film, and the IMDB, film has become more sacred and nigh untouchable than the stage has, leading to people screaming 'blasphemey!' if one so much as tries to remake anything.
The ironic thing in all of this is that most stage productions of
Rocky Horror most likely have racially mixed casts, with people of color playing Frank or anybody else on stage, yet the people most likely to object to this probably will never do any homework to see if this has already happened (much like none of the assholes bitching online about last years's version of
Annie bothered to check and see about people of color being Annie Warbucks [Annie Stacks in the 2014 film version]-they just
ASSume that
Annie-itself a bastardization of the themes in the original comic strip as written by Harold Gray-has to be set in the 1930's Depression milieu instead of today, and can't have a person of color as Annie.) So bullshit follows stupidity follows racism follows ignorance to produce controversies about remaking movies and about racial re-casting of people of color in white lead (or secondary) roles in movies and TV when it's done in theater all of the time. How sad that this is happening now.
For the record, I'd love to see Pitt and Jolie in a remake of any classic man-and-woman movie (except for
Gone with the Wind, which can stay buried for all I care) along with a remake of
The Princess Bride featuring Pattison and Stewart as Wesley and Buttercup, or both in the same kinds of roles as Pitt and Jolie above-it might be fun.
