As the remake clock has now ticked its way up to the 90s, Mark looks through the What-If Machine at the outcomes of five as-yet-unannounced remakes...
It's actually quicker to just assume that your favourite movie from the 1980s, or even the 1990s, is getting remade than it is to look it up and check. From Dirty Dancing to Point Break, via franchise reboots for Poltergeist and Robocop, everything seems to be in some stage of remake development, irrespective of whether or not the studio has yet found some gun-for-hire to instil their “vision” on whichever cash cow is currently being milked.
Granted, you have Die Hard and Indiana Jones and other such properties, which are either getting belated follow-ups, or otherwise have powerful Hollywood players like Willis or Spielberg attached, in order to squash any talk of remaking their work. But practically everything else that is even mildly popular is getting remade or rebooted.
No more, we say! Here are five movies from the 1980s and 1990s on which we've decided to make a pre-emptive strike. Some of these are the best-case scenario for a remake, others are the worst, but at the time of writing, they are all as yet unannounced.
Let's crank up the Time-Space Visualiser, the What-If Machine, or another time-travelling telly of your choice, and look into a future where these remakes and reboots could happen…
Flight of the Navigator
In the vein of other belated additions to their 1980s catalogue, Disney insists that their new Flight of the Navigator film is more a sequel than a remake. In fact, it winds up being closer to 2009's Race to Witch Mountain than Tron: Legacy, as a film that could feasibly take place in the same continuity as the 1986 original.
The marketing, however, takes a similar approach to that of the Tron sequel, with a lengthy campaign aimed at reintroducing Flight of the Navigator to nostalgic Gen-X viewers, and establishing the basic idea to the younger viewers who Disney want to attract. The new film, simply called Navigator, has a lot riding on it at the box office before it's even finished production.
Shaun Levy's role as director gets a mixed response
