Everybody line up and get your pods, becauseInvasion of the Body Snatchersis headed back to cinemas. Deadline reports that Warner Bros. is developing another remake of the classic science fiction story, which traditionally sets its paranoid terrors in a small town where aliens invade, slowly replacing the local inhabitants with inhuman copies.
The studio has recruitedDavid Leslie Johnsonto pen the script. The screenwriter is a familiar face at Warner Bros., who worked in-house at New Line onThe Conjuring 2and the upcomingThe Conjuring 3as well as developing scripts forDungeons and Dragonsand a newA Nightmare on Elm Streetreboot. John Davis (The Predator) is on board to produce.
Based onJack Finney’s 1954sc-fi novelThe Body Snatchers, the film is the latest in a long tradition ofBody Snatcheradaptations, both official and unofficial. The book was first adapted into a movie in the 1956 classicInvasion of the Body Snatchers, a thinly-veiled on spin on McCarthyism. The story was retold again withPhilip Kaufman’sfantastic 1978 incarnation, starringDonald SutherlandandBrooke Adams, and again inAbel Ferrara’s 1993 thrillerBody Snatchers. The last remake arrived courtesy of Warner Bros. with theNicole KidmanandDaniel Craig-frontedThe Invasion, which bombed at the box office and whiffed with critics.Robert Rodriguez’sThe Facultyand the Hammer horrorQuartermass 2also owe no small thanks to Finney’s story.
It’s certainly a timely project, if not a particularly original one at this point. Admittedly, the story is so powerful because it’s always relevant, but hopefully they’ll have an interesting take on the material because we’ve seen this movie so many times before. That said, in the age of “fake news”, vociferous partisan politics, and widespread political discord, it is a fine moment for Invasion of the Body Snatchers to become relevant to the conversation again.
What do you guys think? Interested in seeing this story from a new perspective? Or burnt out on Body Snatchers all together? Sound off in the comments.
