Now that astronauts on the run are in the news, the time is truly ripe for a remake of Peter Hyams’ Capricorn One, a movie that sort of swept up after the wave of paranoid thrillers of the 70s. In the film a group of astronauts are about to go to Mars when, oops!, they find out that the life support system is faulty. NASA thinks about it for a minute and realizes the only thing they can possibly do is fake the Mars landing (of course) – the spaceship takes off empty and the astronauts are hidden away in the desert to film themselves on Faux Mars. Things get sticky, though, when the returning ship burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, which means the astronauts can also never be seen again.
The movie’s pretty stupid, all told, but it boasts one of the great late 70s casts – James Brolin, Sam Waterston and a pre-slaughter OJ Simpson are the astronauts, while Elliot Gould is a nosy reporter. Hal Holbrook and Karen Black show up as well, just to make sure you don’t take the film too seriously.
Moviehole is reporting that a remake, called Capricorn 2 (that’ll confuse ‘em), is on the drawing board, with a late 07 start date being eyed. They couldn’t get any confirmation, but if there wasn’t a remake in play before Clint started calling around, there surely is one now.
If they do remake the movie, I hope they include aspects of our growing understanding of space travel, and have the astronauts on the run wearing diapers. It’s important that we believe this.