One tried and true method of turning a profit in the horror world is, when you’re out of ideas, cash in on a well-known title or property and develop a remake. Filmmaker John Carpenter has already had several of his films undergo the remake treatment, but based on a recent interview with The Guardian, the filmmaker fully supports all of his films getting updates, so long as he gets a paycheck.
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“I love it, if they are going to pay me money,” Carpenter shared when asked about his thoughts on remakes. “If they pay me, it’s wonderful. If they don’t pay me, I don’t care. I think it’s unfair if they don’t pay me. I think everyone should pay me. Why not? I’m an old guy now and I need money. Send me money.”
The filmmaker’s work has already received its fair share of remakes, with Hollywood crafting updates to his films The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13 and Halloween. Of the remakes, Rob Zombie’s take on Halloween was the only real success, earning a sequel two years later.
While Zombie’s remake might have been profitable, Carpenter himself revealed last year he wasn’t too keen on the final product. The filmmaker opened up during an interview with students at the New York Film Academy, per iHorror.
“[Zombie] lied about me. He said that I was very cold to him when he told me that he was going to make [Halloween],” Carpenter shared. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I said, ‘Make it your own movie, man. This is yours now. Don’t worry about me.’ I was incredibly supportive. Why that piece of sh*t lied, I don’t know. He had no reason to. Why did he do it?”
“So, frankly, that will color my response to the film,” the director added. “If I take that away, I did not… I thought that he took away the mystique of the story by explaining too much about [Michael Myers]. I don’t care about that. He’s supposed to be a force of nature. He’s supposed to be almost supernatural. And he was too big. It wasn’t normal.”
Interestingly, Carpenter himself has updated previous versions of films, with 1982’s The Thing being an update of 1951’s The Thing from Another World, both of which were based on a novella, and 1995’s Village of the Damned being an update on the 1960 film.
A new installment in his Halloween series will hit theaters on October 19, 2018.
[H/T The Guardian]
