Hollywood Babble On & On #832: SNARK ATTACK!!!

1. KIM TO CARRY CARRIE, BUT WHY?

MGM and Screen Gems have hired Kimberly Peirce to direct the latest remake of Stephen King's novel Carrie.

My only question is why make the movie in the first place?

It's been done before, first there was the 1976 Brian DePalma film, that very well at the box office for its time, earning back 15 times the original production budget. 

And that was where the success associated with the franchise ended.

First came the Broadway musical in the late 1980s, which flopped and went splat harder than a bucket of pigs blood. It's since become a shorthand for a Broadway disaster.

Then came the sequel, The Rage: Carrie 2, which failed to woo either critics or audiences.

But wait, there's more!

Then came the 2002 NBC TV movie remake, which changed the ending to have 18 year old Carrie White, played by the then 29 year old Angela Bettis, survive. Why?  Because they wanted to make it into a weekly TV series. Anyway, those dreams came to naught, because the TV movie came and went faster than a popcorn fart in a hurricane.

Now you'd think this would make people think twice before sinking serious money into another remake.

Not in remake drunk Hollywood. They'll flog a dead horse long after it's bones and dust if it has a familiar name with "brand recognition."

2. ROLAND EMMERICH GOES BACK TO 2012

Not content to just make overpriced disaster movies on the big screen, Roland Emmerich, the auteur of the overwrought premise is dipping his toe into TV.

The ABC network has green-lit a pilot for a series set during and somehow about the 2012 election that has something to do with an astrophysicist who discovers that their destiny involves heaven and hell.

Personally, I think the only people associated with this product tasting heaven will be Emmerich when he cashes the check ABC is giving him, while the audience gets a taste of hell.

I just can't see the series being a success for the following reasons...

1. Emmerich is a very expensive filmmaker, and this show will cost a mint and a half.

2. The premise somehow involves the 2012 election and we've seen how the audience reacts to Hollywood's treatment of political issues, one half gets insulted while the other half gets bored, both halves tune out.

3. This is Roland Emmerich we're talking about. One of the few filmmakers more bombastic and less coherent than Michael Bay. 

Of course what should we expect, this is the same network that gave us the creative abortion known as Work It, the show only watched by masochists and those to dumb to tell their asses from a hole in the ground.