The Risky Biz Blog reports that David Cronenberg is now attached to direct and possibly write Fox’s remake of his earlier 1986 film The Fly, which in itself was a remake of the 1958 film, which was based on a George Langelaan short story. The idea of David Cronenberg doing a remake is obviously not that crazy, but remaking his own film? There better be some cool new twists in mind for approaching the film besides just improved special effects and whatnot. Perhaps he thought of some ideas when he recently revisited the story when he turned it into an opera with Howard Shore. And who is possibly going to match Jeff Goldblum’s performance? I would absolutely love to see David Cronenberg return to body horror, but we’ve already seen him do this story and do it extremely well. Maybe he could take over David Fincher’s adaptation of Black Hole by Charles Burns… Those comics would be right up Cronenberg’s alley, mixing many of the themes he’s tackled over his long career.
If you’re unaware, in which case you need to rectify this immediately by procuring the film ASAP, The Fly is about an eccentric scientist developing teleportation technology who tests the system on himself while a fly is unknowingly inside with him. Their genetics are merged on the other side and a gruesome transformation, both physically and mentally, begins for the scientist. Geena Davis and John Getz also starred in the 1986 film.
Cronenberg is attached to a couple projects right now, although it’s unclear if any of them have much forward momentum. He’s the director on The Matarese Circle, an adaptation of the Robert Ludlum novel that would star Denzel Washington and Tom Cruise, assuming their schedules were ever open at the same time again. There’s the adaptation of Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo which is supposed to shoot next year. He’s spoken about a possible sequel to Eastern Promises, although Viggo Mortensen semi-retirement might hinder that one. I’m inclined to be more excited about any of those than Cronenberg tackling something he’s already explicitly done. I was perfectly content to just ignore the long discussed second remake of The Fly, but now… now I have conflicted thoughts. Time will tell if this is a valuable use of Cronenberg’s time and talents.
