Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Day 3: To remake or not to remake

I watched a film the other day that I had not seen in a while called, "The Quiet Earth". It is a science fiction film based on a novel by Craig Harrison of the same name. It is a New Zealand film that I once saw many years back and just recently popped into my head again. I received it via Netflix and found it just as entertaining and engrossing as I did when I first watched it. I am bringing this up because I remember the first time I saw this movie, I instantly wanted to rewrite the script and make a new version of it. Not that I thought the original needed to be improved on or anything, I just really wanted to give it a whirl.

This thought often pops into my head(as it obviously does to Hollywood executives), despite the fact that it seems like a sort of cop-out to creating an original idea. In many ways it is. I can just take this story that I already know and love and just tweak it a bit. Opposed to coming up with something entirely new on my own. On the other hand though, you have immediately set yourself up for failure, as you already have something that can instantly make your story seem inferior. I am still wrestling with the decision of whether or not I should include my remake ideas into my "presentation" that I am still preparing. I think writing one would be an intriguing idea and an interesting exercise on a different form of creativity.

"The Quiet Earth" is not the only story that I have on my remake list, but due to it's obscurity, is probably number one. I have a couple of other film's that I would love to take a shot at but they are much more popular and far more overwhelming propositions at this point. Ultimately I am most likely going to pass on the remake idea for this year's project, but I do think the whole idea of it is very interesting indeed. To remake or not to remake, that is the question; To which I think I already know the answer.

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