Some stories are so timeless they get told over and over again. Such is the case with Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, which is set for a new version at Warner Bros. The sci-fi tale follows a small town where aliens invade, slowly replacing the inhabitants with inhuman copies.
While it’s easy to point to the current glut of remakes and reboot and claim Hollywood has ran out of ideas, remakes of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers have been happening quite frequently since the 50s. Originally based on Jack Finney‘s 1954 novel, The Body Snatchers, the original film was released in 1956 as a thinly-veiled depiction of McCarthyism as America was fearing a communist invasion.
The story was retold in 1978 with Philip Kaufman‘s incarnation, arguably the most well received version, which starred Donald Sutherland and Brooke Adams. Abel Ferrara then made a very underrated, slightly tweaked version in 1993’s Body Snatchers, before 2007’s misguided The Invasion, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, flopped at the box office.
The first three films especially tapped into real-life fears at the time, and Warner Bros. will be hoping their new version of the always-relevant story can also be timely in an age of “fake news”, “post-truth” and widespread political discord.
The studio have hired David Leslie Johnson to pen the script, who has already worked with them on The Conjuring 2 and the upcoming third film in the franchise, as well as scripts for Dungeons And Dragons and a new Nightmare On Elm Street reboot.
This is one remake that’s easy to stomach, and it’ll be interesting to see what sort of spin Warner Bros. put on a story that has had influence on practically every sci-fi film since the 1950s. News on casting and who’ll be stepping into the director’s chair will be followed closely.
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