I remember when I first saw Piranha and I was pretty freaked out to be honest, it scared me a lot. Yeah, well I was young. Still, after that I would never take up on an excursion of swimming with Piranha’s again.
So with current Hollywood custom, here comes the remake, from Entertainment Insiders:
Atmosphere Entertainment and Relativity Media have announced that the first picture to go into production for their joint venture genre label Chiller Films will be a remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 horror hit “Piranha” according to Screen Daily.
Chuck Russell (“The Scorpion King,” “Nightmare On Elm Street 3”), is writing the screenplay about a prehistoric strain of fish that terrorises college students at Lake Havasu in Arizona.
“We felt that Piranha is the perfect genre picture for us to do,” Atmoshpere chief Mark Canton said in a statement. “It’s a classic horror thriller with high-end talent attached and with all of the ingredients to deliver a plethora of scares.”
I first had the idea to remake Piranha about three years ago, right before the current horror film resurgence,” IPW chairman Marc Toberoff added. “That one word tells a story evoking universal fear. I’ve always felt that death by piranha was much more horrifying than death by shark.”
Death by Piranha! So little nibbles are worse than big chunks…I’d never really thought which was worse, mind you it does evoke the idea for the next movie, Jaws vs Piranha! There’s also the interesting comment in there about high-end talent, I do presume that they are trying to, or already have, bigger names attached than the original? It also looks like Chiller Films are set to do a series of horror remakes, possibly all from the same genre if they are capped at $20m.
Please, no more. Where have all the original writers gone?