The Remake Of Horror Classic The Omen Has An Utterly Bizarre Screenwriting Credit
In Charles de Lauzirika's masterful documentary "Wreckage and Rage: Making Alien 3," producer David Giler laments that the David Fincher-directed sequel was doomed to disappoint because the studio was more focused on making a release date than a movie. Though I think they wound up with a boldly dour film that is every bit as singular as the movies that preceded it, his point is well taken. Setting down rails before you ride a train into town is not a bad idea. But the only thing Hollywood studios hate more than originality is learning from their mistakes.
Which brings us to 20th Century Fox's 2006 remake of "The Omen."
Amusingly, the studio that courted disaster with "Alien 3" 14 years prior opted to resuscitate their dead and decaying "The Omen" franchise because of a release date. 6/6/06 was only ever going to happen once, and, so the reasoning went, you'd be leaving money on the table if you didn't bring Satan-spawn Damien Thorn back for an updated installment on the Biblical date that signified the mark of the beast (and, not for nothing, was seared atop the murderous imp's scalp).
This was the perfect Hollywood pitch. You didn't need a writer for a greenlight. You just had to pay a sentient screenwriter to place a modern spin on a 30-year-old blockbuster. No one cared if the movie was any good, they just needed to get the damn thing made. Fox succeeded, but, in the process, they wound up paying two screenwriters for possibly the easiest bit of hackwork to ever get assigned in Hollywood history. Because according to the Writers Guild of America, "The Omen" (2006) wasn't just a remake; it was a carbon copy.
An uncalled-for remake shrouded in pointless mystery
In the spring of 2006, editor Jeff Goldsmith of the publication Creative Screenwriting asked me if I'd like to interview Dan McDermott for the June issue. McDermott was making the long-lead rounds as the writer of "The Omen" remake, and, as a huge fan of the 1976 original directed by Richard Donner and written by David Seltzer, I happily accepted the gig. There was just one catch: I couldn't see the movie ahead of time.
This was not standard showbiz operating procedure, especially for a publication that made its name on deep dives into the craft of screenwriting. If I couldn't see the movie before I interviewed McDermott, I was operating as a de facto studio publicist. I still did the interview, but our conversation went something like this:
"How is your version of 'The Omen' different from Seltzer's?"
"It's darker. It's a bold reimagining of a horror classic."
"How so?"
"I can't get into specifics, but I'm so proud of what we've done! You'll see!"
I did see. On June 6, 2006, when I paid to watch the first screening of "The Omen" on opening day at the Hollywood ArcLight so I could race home and shred the sucker for my at-the-time fledgling website, Collider. It was a blandly awful movie for the most part, but as I trotted back to my apartment, I was puzzled by two things: how much money was Liev Schreiber paid to star in easily the worst film of his career, and where the hell was Dan McDermott's writing credit?
How David Seltzer reaped a devilish windfall
The John Moore-directed remake of "The Omen" is not a shot-for-shot redo of the original àla Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," but that would've been less offensive than the autopilot garbage he cobbled together so Fox could make a quick killing via a novelty (Tuesday) opening. It's such an insultingly lazy movie that I could've walked out 10 minutes in and knocked out my review. Obviously, I would never do something so unprofessional, but you rarely see a studio film as hideously unprofessional as this.
And yet as I enter my 25th year of eking out a living as an entertainment journalist, I can assure you that I have only once interviewed a screenwriter for a movie he did not, in the eyes of his union, write. Seltzer, who never worked a day on Moore's remake, received sole credit, and he hasn't worked since.
Dan McDermott's script for "The Omen" is, dialogue-wise, original. I think. I'll be honest with you here: I'm not going to sit through that piece of garbage again to verify this. But at the time of my 2006 viewing, I could pretty much quote Donner's movie chapter and verse, so I'll give McDermott credit for not being an out-and-out plagiarist. In this department, he sucked out loud on his own.
As for the narrative, it is a beat-for-beat facsimile only nowhere near as lurid. It's bloodless. You don't get the jolt of the church spire impaling the priest nor the grand guignol pleasure of David Warner's head getting sheared off by a plate-glass window. McDermott, who was a creative executive for Fox at the time we chatted, isn't entirely to blame here. He wrote the film his bosses told him to write, and got smacked down by the WGA for doing so. He hasn't written a screenplay since (his IMDb page is devoid of credits), but as the head of AMC studios he's probably making rent. I'd gladly suffer a brutal week of reviews for a movie I didn't officially write for that kind of financial stability.
And don't you dare cry for David Seltzer. The apparently retired screenwriter is due a new paycheck when "The First Omen" hits theaters on April 5, 2024.