Videodrome is a 1983 classic techno-horror film starring James Woods as a Canadian TV exec who starts pirating a channel that shows real killings, snuff film style. It gets very popular and a bunch of weird shit happens. It’s basically a cautionary tale about TV only David Cronenberg made it, so you know it’s weirder than anything.
Well, Universal Studios have decided to reboot/remake or whatever the fuck they plan on calling it to Videodrome. They even hooked a music video director to helm it, Alan Berg.
Problems:
1. This didn’t need to be remade.
2. David Cronenberg is a genius-level weirdo. Unless he wanted to go back to that world, theres no reason to go back
3. All of the creepiness, will most likely be replaced with slick visuals.
4. Being able to direct a commercial or music video should not give you carte blanche to direct a heady sci-fi horror epic with lots of moralistic ideas about media.
I’m assuming Universal’s thought is that the original is 30 years old almost, so they can re-release it on blu-ray around the time they get the new one up and running in theaters. I saw the original years ago when I was too young to even understand it, but it creeped me out to no end. Movies don’t creep people out like that anymore. I’ll bet they even try and neuter it by making it PG-13.
David Cronenberg must be pissed about this while he drinks his Molson.