I wonder how many of you are going to comment on this in a positive way, I think perhaps it’s going to be small, mind you it would be interesting to see how many fans there are of Paul W.S. Anderson out there.
Death Race 2000 was by no means a great film, but it was amusing in parts and had some notably odd guest appearances and it has achieved some form of cult status. However, I don’t know that I could sit here and defend it’s integrity against a remake or indeed a sequel.
Sequel it is then as Mr Anderson is set to develop Death Race 3000 as both Writer and Director, and with his obvious videogame\movie connections Viacom are off already spouting about a game of the movie. Note: Engage creative brain before announcing projects. Coming Soon have it from Variety.
Anderson, who last directed Alien vs. Predator and Resident Evil, will join Corman and C/W partners Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner as producers, as will Anderson’s Impact Pictures partner Jeremy Bolt.
The Paul Bartel-directed original is considered a B-movie classic, a campy and polemical black comedy that pitted David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone in a race where drivers accumulated points for running over pedestrians. Anderson’s got a different vision, planning a mix of Road Warrior and road kill.
“The original was so much about decimating pedestrians that the actual race was almost irrelevant, and I want to restore that,” Anderson said. “Set in 2020, ours is an ultraviolent, no-holds-barred race with heavily armed Escalades, Ferraris and Aston Martins.”
Actually, I can’t help but smile. My ears pricked up at the very mention of all those cars, but then I am a bit of a power nut (car wise, not controlling!). Depending on what Anderson actually meant there, it might be good. Did he mean that he wants to restore the original feeling of the movie which was more about the Government control, the brutal desire of the public to watch violence and death, or was he saying he wants to restore the crashing into people with big cars? Frankly the second sounds more fun, and where has the original feeling gone? It’s still there if you watch the movie.
Good idea \ Bad idea? Should he just stick to his many videogame adaptations he’s into right now, including that Resident Evil 3 film!
