The devil is returning once more in the form of precocious preteen, and this time he’ll be the (sorta) offspring of Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles in the remake The Omen 666.
For those out there who have somehow never seen the Richard Donner original, it starred Gregory Peck and Lee Remick as an upper-class couple who adopt a kid after their infant is stillborn. Unfortunately for them, during the boy’s early years it becomes apparent that he’s the anti-Christ, and not in any hyperbolic sense.
The Fox movie, directed by John Moore (whose Behind Enemy Lines is getting a direct-to-DVD sequel, making Devin’s recent Still Behind Enemy Lines joke now seem more depressing than funny), is getting rushed into production to make its super-gimmicky release date of 6/6/06, which is the only day they could convince Satan himself to attend the premiere. The child will be played by Bill Pullman.
While I couldn’t care less about Julia Stiles, who’s virtually interchangeable with Erika Cristensen and Leelee Sobieski, this sort of thing seems like a bit of a step backwards for Schreiber, whose directing debut Everything is Illuminated looks relatively impressive. I’d actually rather see him reprise his role as shadowy operative John Clark (from The Sum of All Fears) in the Rainbow Six movie, assuming it’ll get made — Dawn of the Dead remake director Zack Snyder supposedly took over for John Woo on the project, but Paramount also has a Splinter Cell movie in the works, so the race against global terrorism (in theaters, anyway) is on!