Eraser: Reborn Just Finished Filming, And It's The Arnold-Free Reboot No One Asked For
Did you know a direct-to-video reboot of the 1996 Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie "Eraser" is coming our way? If you answered "yes," you probably worked on the movie.
According to Deadline, the project filmed in secret over the summer and is now in post-production. "Eraser: Reborn" was directed by John Pogue ("Deep Blue Sea 3") and stars Dominic Sherwood ("Shadowhunters: The Mortal Instruments"), Jacky Lai ("V-Wars"), McKinley Belcher III ("Ozark"), and Eddie Ramos ("Animal Kingdom") – none of which I can comfortably promise are real people. According to the report, Sherwood plays U.S. Marshal Mason Pollard, "who specializes in engineering the fake deaths of witnesses that need to leave no trace of their existence."
Name Recognition Really Is Everything, Huh?
Arnold Schwarzenegger has been in some stone cold cinematic classics, but he's also been in a lot of mediocre action films. The original "Eraser" falls firmly in the latter category. Arnold played John Kruger, a U.S. Marshal whose job is to terminate erase the pasts of important government witnesses in order to keep them alive so they can testify against top-tier criminals. Vanessa Williams plays a defense contractor who discovers the existence of a powerful electromagnetic weapon, which she thinks her bosses will sell to the highest bidder. The movie is notable for its eye-rolling one-liners – at one point Arnold shoots a massive alligator at point-blank range and says "You're luggage" to its corpse – and also for its iffy CG; the aforementioned alligator looked terrible even at the time, and the electromagnetic weapons fired goofy-looking laser pulses that were ill-conceived from day one.
Arguably the only good thing about the original movie is the fact that its supporting cast is rounded out with a bunch of fun character actors: people like James Caan ("Thief"), James Cromwell ("Babe"), James Coburn ("The Magnificent Seven"), Danny Nucci ("Titanic"), Andy Romano ("Under Siege"), and eventual "Mad Men" actor John Slattery. It's safe to say "Eraser: Reborn" will not benefit from the same number of veteran actors who can chew scenery and sell nonsense exposition with the best of 'em.
So the question is: why reboot "Eraser," a middle-of-the-road, largely forgettable entry in Schwarzenegger's run of 1990s action films? Is it for the standard cynical reason that it's simply based on a thing that made money, so therefore it must mean that people will be interested in seeing it? Does John Pogue have a blistering hot take on this property that was so good, the folks at WB couldn't pass it up? Did the company just want to put out a new movie to mark the 25th anniversary of the first film?
Deadline says the project is being made for Warner Bros. Home Entertainment but specifically not for HBO Max, which is a somewhat odd choice in this era when film studios are pivoting hard to streaming. We expect to see this pop up on VOD before 2021 is over.