D.B. Weiss Writing Proposed Remake Of John Carpenter's 'They Live'

Much to the chagrin of some fans, the films of John Carpenter are proving to be fertile ground for remakes and offshoots. Halloween, The Thing and Escape From New York are just a sampling. Along with the developing plans for Escape From New York, there may at some point be a new version of They Live, which originally cast 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper as a man who learns that aliens have infiltrated America's ruling classes and are flooding commerce with subliminal messages.

At the New York Comic Con, The Thing producer Eric Newman talked about the possible remake, offering up the name of the current writer and noting that the special sunglasses that were key to the original film might be phased out of the remake.

io9 talked to Eric Newman, who said that Dan "D.B." Weiss, currently working on Game of Thrones for HBO, is writing a draft of They Live. Problem at the moment being that Mr. Weiss has a lot of work to do for Game of Thrones at the moment, so it'll be next year at least before things really move forward on this remake.

The producer also said, when asked if the remake would have the sunglasses that allowed Roddy Piper to see the true nature of our alien visitors:

We're discussing that. I'd like to say that really, a vagrant wandering around the streets could get you to try on his sunglasses, if he would leave you alone afterwards. He may even pay you $100, "Hey put these on." So we're kind of exploring different versions of what is that thing that allows you to see. But I'm not going to tell you what it is.

Pressed further, he said, "It might be something different than sunglasses."

The remake of They Live has been percolating for a while (we reported on it in late 2008 and haven't heard much since) so I wouldn't get too worried about things yet — a lot could change. And dropping the sunglasses wouldn't even be the worst idea — there are plenty of other ways that the alien infiltrators could be revealed. More to the point, who'll replace both John Carpenter and Roddy Piper?