I’ve been saying for years that technology has advanced to the point that we need some kind of new film about shrunken people. Fortunately Edgar Wright and Marvel will be playing in that space soon enough with Ant-Man, and I also figured the remake machine grinding up 90s properties would reach Honey, I Shrunk The Kids for an Eddie Murphy comedy or something sooner or later. Turns out MGM is going back to the oldest of schools though, and they’re bringing the original author with them…
Richard Matheson is an 87 year old giant of scifi, and wrote both the original novel The Incredible Shrinking Man and the screenplay based on it. Since then he’s gone on to write everything from Twilight Zone episodes (including the episode Real Steel is based on) to the Jaws 3D screenplay to the novels and short stories behind What Dreams May Come, Stir Of Echos, The Box and I Am Legend.
It will be Matheson who re-adapts his famous story for a modern take, and the writer is employing his son to help him. The writer intends to modernize the tone and background technology, as well as inject some action into the story. In fact, Matheson describes the new project as an “existential action movie.”
Honestly this is meat-and-potatoes science fiction- the kind of basic, iconic tale that can stand being remade every generation with something new to say in each passing decade. It’s not as if the loftiest of science fiction cinema has sprung forth from Matheson and his stories, but there are a lot of ways this one could be good, and a few ways it could be great. I’ll be excited to find out who they get behind the camera on this one.
Source | THR
5 comments
Here’s hoping it ends with him floundering in quantum foam 🙂
Sounds like a possible CGI overload, and for that reason I’ll stay away from it. Been done, much better, before.
Don’t call The Box his. Matheson’s influence with that movie finished in the first 15 minutes, it’s his like The Lawnmower Man is Stephen King’s.
I loved Lily Tomlin’s version as a child. But given the dismal state of family comedies these days, I’m glad Matheson is involved and keeping it as serious as such an inherently campy concept can be. I hope some of the “existential” survives.
Matheson is one of my all-time faves (he’s also the man who gave us Kolchak: The Night Stalker, which was one of my favorite shows as a kid) — I’d love to see where this ends up going.
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