How Dare They?

[Gingerbread Demon]

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/18/entertainment/the-princess-bride-remake-trnd/index.html

How dare they.

You can't remake perfection. The films star Cary Elwes said as much.

"There's a shortage of perfect movies in this world," Elwes wrote in a Tweet. "It would be a pity to damage this one."

 

[Grendelsbayne]

So then it flops. Nothing's damaged.

 

[Mysterion]

Inconceivable!

 

[Tosk]

Gotta love Elwes with the paraphrase. Noice!

 

[Kor]

Anybody want a peanut?

Add this to the list of "unnecessary remakes." Unless it goes back to the source material to be closer to the original novel. The Zoo of Death would be interesting to see on the big screen.

Kor

 

[Greg Cox]

If we can have multiple film versions of The Three Musketeers or Pride & Prejudice (or It or Pet Sematary), we can have more than one adaptation of The Princess Bride.

There's no rule that says there can only be one film version of a novel.

 

[JD]

My attitude toward it would entirely depend on who is doing it.

 

[fireproof78]

So then it flops. Nothing's damaged.

Exactly.

 

[Marsden]

As long as there's an IP some studio owns, these will always happen.

It's probably going to suck, but even if somehow it doesn't, what good is it?

I'll just watch my dvd or read my novel, or both.

William Goldman died in 2018, less than a year ago, and now this. I think he might not have been on board but the heirs would appreciate the $$$$$$$.

 

[UssGlenn]

From context he was clearly pulling Princess Bride out of a hat of all the various properties that have been suggested to him for reboots, not that they actually had it in development. Much ado about nothing.

 

[Greg Cox]

The way I see it, it's a no-lose proposition.

If the remake works, we still have the first movie.

If the remake is great, we now have two good movie adaptations of the novel.

Don't see a problem there.

 

[Gaith]

^ Perhaps, though a flopped remake would probably lessen the chance of a best-case scenario - a great next-generation flick featuring a child of Westley and Buttercup (played by Elwes and Wright) going on an adventure. True, the underperformance of Ghostbusters '16 probably directly led to the upcoming non-reboot sequel, so that wouldn't necessarily be the case, but Ghostbusters (and Trek) have lots of merchandising appeal to incentivize studios to keep the OG franchises going, whereas the floppage of anything Princess Bride-related would probably discourage any further efforts. Probably. Just riffing, here.

 

[StarCruiser]

I suspect the problem will be - "How do they catch lightning in a bottle again?"...

Remember that it wasn't just the wonderful book but, also the right director - producer - cast - screenwriters.... The odds are stacked against any remake working half as well.

 

[Gaith]

Also: when was the last time a live-action remake - not a reboot/soft reboot/legacy sequel, but full-on continuity-restarting remake - of a beloved live-action classic was a big hit? I'm struggling to recall examples. Spielberg's War of the Worlds and Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Peter Jackson's King Kong all did good business back in '05, but it's not as though any of those are all that fondly remembered now. (And calling the 1950s WotW beloved in the popular sense is a stretch, as the remake was probably the only one the vast majority of 2005's audiences had seen - and, if we're honest, ditto for King Kong.) Oh, and there was last year's A Star is Born, I guess - but again, how much of its audience had seen any of the prior versions, the most recent of which was 42 years previous? How many audience members of Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead had seen the original?

Apart from that... Yes, the "classic" versions of The Wizard of Oz and The Maltese Falcon were both remakes, but those were also generations ago. Unless I'm blanking on some big ones, I'm not seeing much favorable precedent here.

 

[Tosk]

True Grit did pretty well. And the Planet of the Apes flicks.

 

[Gaith]

True Grit did pretty well. And the Planet of the Apes flicks.

The Apes flicks were reboots with different stories (if familiar themes). True Grit 2010 did indeed do pretty well, but again, how much of its audience actually remembered the '69 version? A minority, at best.

 

[Tosk]

I guess if you make the doorway narrow enough it is pretty hard to think of (m)any.

 

[Gaith]

^ Hey now, don't give the game away! I do think it's hard to come up with apt comparisons, however. Like Back to the Future, and, say, The Breakfast Club, it's beloved, but unlike those movies, despite the old-school video game graphics that begin the movie, it's also timeless - as in, the story of the grandfather reading a fairy-tale story could play out pretty much the same way today, whereas Marty McFly's and the Club's experiences would be very different.

But hey, at least Disney had the sense, when attempting to launch an Oz franchise, to do a prequel to the '39 film, rather than a remake.

 

[Mage]

The way I see it, it's a no-lose proposition.

If the remake works, we still have the first movie.

If the remake is great, we now have two good movie adaptations of the novel.

Don't see a problem there.

Yes, but now you're being rational, and that doesn't work here.

 

[theenglish]

^ Hey now, don't give the game away! I do think it's hard to come up with apt comparisons, however. Like Back to the Future, and, say, The Breakfast Club, it's beloved, but unlike those movies, despite the old-school video game graphics that begin the movie, it's also timeless - as in, the story of the grandfather reading a fairy-tale story could play out pretty much the same way today, whereas Marty McFly's and the Club's experiences would be very different.

But hey, at least Disney had the sense, when attempting to launch an Oz franchise, to do a prequel to the '39 film, rather than a remake.

Except you are talking about remaking the MOVIE, not the BOOK.