You don’t mess with greatness. You just don’t. Gus Van Sant learned that the hard way with his 1998 remake of Hitchcock’s “Psycho.” However, plenty of filmmakers have clearly not gotten the memo.
Over the past year, it was announced that Robert Downey Jr. would be remaking Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” Spike Lee is currently shooting his own take of Kurosawa’s “High & Low,” and J.C. Chandor will be bringing Coppola’s “The Conversation” to the small screen.
Here’s another dubious attempt. Director Scott Derrickson, known for his work on “The Black Phone” and “Doctor Strange,” is set to helm a remake of Charles Laughton’s goth-horror masterpiece, “The Night of The Hunter.”
The 1955 film, based on David Grubbs’ novel, should not be remade. It’s as perfect as films go. The news, reported by Deadline, reveals that Derrickson’s longtime writing partner, C. Robert Cargill (“Doctor Strange”), will be penning the script.
“Night of The Hunter” tackled the deranged character of Harry Powell, an evildoer who deceptively presented himself as a preacher but was, in fact, a serial killer. Robert Mitchum played Powell in one of the great performances in movie history. Powell manages to marry a lonely widow (Shelley Winters) with two children, in a devious scheme to steal the family loot — once the children get involved, things get very dark.
This was the feature debut of actor-turned-filmmaker Charles Laughton. It was such a bust with critics and audiences that he would never again direct another film. And yet, ironically, it’s now considered as one of the most influential American films of the 20th century. Laughton’s masterpiece was a hybrid of genres that felt like it was released in the wrong era — its hypnotic mix of magical surrealism and horror caught people off guard.
Derrickson already remade another classic film, he directed his own take on the sci-fi film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” which starred Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly, and we all know how horribly that endeavor turned out.
Cargill, who also co-wrote “Sinister” and “Black Phone” with Derrickson, knew that backlash would occur after the announcement of a ‘Night of the Hunter’ remake, so he took to Twitter to explain that he believes ‘Night of the Hunter’ deserved to be remade with a darker tone to the original.
