The Weinstein Co. is in the midst of gathering plenty of funds to start making movies, and they’re looking at a couple of secret weapons to add to their eventual bottom line, including two new Michael Moore documentaries, one of them a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 (more on that below). The New York Times ran a whole thing about the company’s new slate, and nestled in the midst of a list of projects like a TV show with the admittedly great name Emergency Sex (it’s a reality show about UN workers. Huh?) is this:
Under the separation agreement between the Weinsteins and Disney, the brothers were given sequel rights to 15 franchise or potentially franchise projects, including a remake of "Halloween."
Okay, okay, calm down. First of all, this doesn’t mean that any such remake is happening. They just have the rights. But even if it does get made, it isn’t like these guys can take the original film away from us – God knows there are so many DVD editions of that fucking thing they’re bound to miss at least one.
Still, it’s a little weird to imagine that this could happen. Halloween is a really good film, in pretty much every way. It’s certainly heads and shoulders above the films it inspired in the boring slasher genre. What could possibly be improved upon in a new version? Would we end up with Nickelback doing a rock version of Carpenter’s theme.
It’s worth noting that this Halloween remake isn’t technically new news. There was word about this way back in ’03, when Dimension was supposedly trying to get Carpenter himself back to remake the film. Of course the guy is way too happy playing video games, watching basketball and collecting checks for crap like the remake of The Fog to bother actually working on this.
Meanwhile, Michael Moore is releasing Sicko through the Weinstein Co. That film is an indictment of health care and insurance in America, which is really something everyone should be able to get behind. His other film is Fahrenheit 9/11.5, which will follow up the original film and examine the 2004 presidential campaign. Thankfully for Moore, George Bush just keeps fucking up, so I imagine you can expect to see documentaries on Plame/Rovegate, the Katrina horror and that spy in the White House.