Posted on Wednesday, October 31st, 2012 by Angie Han
Having weathered MGM’s financial woes and some last-minute digital revamping to avoid pissing off the Chinese, the Red Dawn remake is finally ready to hit theaters next month. A first trailer hit a couple of months ago, and now the first TV spot has arrived to remind us of the absurdity we can expect. Watch the video after the jump, then stick around for more photos from RoboCop and a casting update on a new Little Rascals.
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Whether or not you like the original Red Dawn, a product of Walter Sobchak inspiration and notable Hollywood conservative John Milius, it at least has a specific ideology beyond the basic concept of “blow shit up real good.” (Part of that ideology is a strong anti-gun control sentiment, as invading forces use firearm purchase records to find potential resistance, and of course the Wolverines triumph in part because they have weapons.)
Looking at the first trailer for the remake, which was shot a couple years ago but shelved in part because of MGM’s once-dire financial situation, I can’t tell if this wants to be anything but a crass commercial enterprise that trades on patriotism (an argument levied at the original, to be fair) or a subversive comedy masquerading as action movie.
Whatever this Red Dawn is, it features Chris Hemsworth in his pre-Thor days, as well as Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Adrianne Palicki, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise (the younger Cruise, if you’re wondering), and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, most of whom band together to form a guerilla resistance group called the Wolverines, the better to fight off that North Korean invasion that no one has ever been afraid of. Read More »
Sometimes we put all the depressing remake news in one place, but this installment is relatively uplifting. It has news about one big hurdle any new Gremlins film faces, an innocuous new poster, and a silly but entertaining trailer. After the break,
- A Gremlins remake can’t happen without Steven Spielberg’s blessing,
- See the poster for Red Dawn,
- and check out the trailer for The Loft, which remakes a 2008 Belgian thriller.
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Posted on Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 by Angie Han
Four years ago, MGM started getting the pieces together for a remake of the 1984 war pic Red Dawn. The expectation was that the movie would come out sometime around 2010, but it then suffered massive setbacks including the studio’s financial woes and the realization that demonizing the Chinese isn’t cool anymore, now that Asia accounts for a huge chunk of the international box office. It was starting to look like the film might never get a theatrical release at all when FilmDistrict swooped in last fall, setting the shelved flick for a November 2012 release.
With that new opening date creeping closer, the distributor has released two new images from the movie showing stars Chris Hemsworth, Josh Hutcherson, and Josh Peck. Though we’ve previously gotten a look at the cast in costume and glimpses of the set, these are some of the first official stills to hit the web. Check ’em out after the jump.
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Posted on Wednesday, November 23rd, 2011 by Angie Han
As we head into Thanksgiving weekend and gear up to watch what feels like a dozen new releases this weekend, FilmDistrict and Sony have quietly announced new release dates for a few of their projects.
That long-delayed Red Dawn remake that FilmDistrict picked up earlier this fall is now scheduled to drop next fall, while Sony’s Pixels and Singularity have both set dates for 2013. Meanwhile, we finally have a set date for that Kathryn Bigelow project about Osama bin Laden. More details after the jump.
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FilmDistrict is turning into the distributor of odd orphans. It grabbed the former Miramax project Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, and is now reportedly about to pick up the Red Dawn remake directed by Bourne second-unit shooter Dan Bradley. MGM financed and shot the film in 2009 before undergoing bankruptcy and reorganization. The movie made news early this year when we became aware that the Chinese enemies were being digitally altered into North Korean adversaries, hopefully to avoid pissing off the rapidly expanding Chinese movie market.
We thought we might see the movie via Sony, but that deal never went through. Now FilmDistrict, riding a Drive-fueled high, is stepping in. Read More »
This week, Dave, Devindra, and Adam discuss the death of a cinema icon, the amount of dancing present in Black Swan, and the dangerous intersections of art and commerce. Special guest Stephen Tobolowsky joins us. Check out Stephen’s new short story in ebook form!
You can always e-mail us at slashfilmcast(AT)gmail(DOT)com, or call and leave a voicemail at 781-583-1993. Join us for our next live broadcast on Sunday, April 3rd at Slashfilm’s live page where we’ll be discussing Source Code.
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Things were so simple when the original Red Dawn was released in 1984. The world seemed like a smaller place. Our enemies were defined clear and simple. (Well, sometimes.) If a studio wanted to make a movie about how much it would suck if one of those enemies managed to invade the States, it would do it. Don’t like that? John Milius, the original Walter Sobchak, says tough shit, and bugger off.
Things aren’t so simple now. The identities of our enemies aren’t nearly as clear-cut. Some, for example, might say that China is an enemy simply by virtue of the fact that the country is one of the last bastions of communism. Others look at China’s ballooning economy and say,”well, wait a second here, maybe we can live with the communism so long as they have all that delicious money.” (And a great many others aren’t really worried about China one way or the other.) Go read the Economist if you want to get into details there; meanwhile I’ll cut to the chase.
In 2009 a remake of Red Dawn was shot, and in 2010 it was shelved when solvency of MGM dissolved like a wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz. Now there’s a plan forming to release the film. Trouble is, the Soviet enemies in the original were replaced with Chinese aggressors for the remake, and in the past couple years China has become one of the most important economies for media consumption. Oops? Enter digital artists, who can safely change the Chinese insignias to those of North Korea. Read More »
We’ve known in the past 24 hours that Sony and MGM were working on a deal that would allow Sony to again distribute James Bond, and that would also carry forward as a real partnership between the studios.
Now we have more details, and some of them are quite good. The deal will allow Sony to “release all future films made by MGM,” as well as films that have already been completed. That means we could actually see The Cabin in the Woods, written and produced by Joss Whedon and directed by Cloverfield writer Drew Goddard, and the Red Dawn remake this year. Read More »
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
As MGM has come out of bankruptcy and inched closer to being a real working studio once more, we’ve heard a lot about the potential for The Hobbit and a new James Bond film. We haven’t heard much at all, however, about the completed remake of Red Dawn, which has been sitting on the shelf for six months. So enjoy this cast photo (which is likely a costume test, and definitely not a still frame) showing the new Wolverines, among whom is Chris Hemsworth (Thor).
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