American Werewolf in London Being Remade By Director’s Son & Walking Dead’s Alpert & Kirkman
I know what you’re thinking… “Another remake?! does Hollywood have no original ideas! Why can’t they leave classics alone, etc…” And, yes… you’re probably right on all of that. However, this one has some interesting things going for it.
Firstly, this remake of the John Landis cult classic American Werewolf in London is being written and directed by his son, Max Landis. This isn’t just pure nepotism. Max has been carving out a pretty successful career as a screenwriter, having penned action comedy American Ultra, scifi flick Chronicle, and is responsible for the upcoming adaptation of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, which is due to land on Netflix on 11th of December. He has directed a couple of movie shorts, and the not-very-well-received Me Him Her feature film, but this will be his largest directorial undertaking to date. And given the history of the film, you can be sure it’s not something he’s going to want to screw up! It’s also not his first venture into horror, having been involved with Syfy’s Channel Zero, which is currently airing on 5Star in the UK.
Secondly, the other producers involved are David Alpert and Robert Kirkman, two of the people behind The Walking Dead, and if anyone knows how to do modern day horror, it’s those guys! It also seems that Landis senior approves of the idea, as original director (and father of Max) John Landis will also be an executive producer on the movie.
For those of you too young to remember the original 1981 film, An American Werewolf in London follows David Kessler (David Naughton) and Jack Goodman (Griffin Dunne) as two American’s backpacking around England. Whilst on North York Moors, they are attacked by a wild animal, which kills Jack, and leave David in the hospital. After 3 weeks in a coma, he wakes up, only to be greeted by Jack’s reanimated corpse telling him that he’s a werewolf and needs to kill himself before the next full moon. David, of course, believes he is hallucinating, and ignores the ‘advice’ of his friend, which leads to one of the most spectacular werewolf transformations ever seen on screen (video below). Bear in mind that this was all done without the use of digital effects, which is why it won the Oscar For Best Makeup the following year.
No news yet on when the film is likely to drop, but we’ll be watching with interest.
