Lionsgate Rebooting Cube Franchise With New Movie

Following news from earlier in the year that Lionsgate is looking to reboot the Blair Witch franchise, a new report reveals another horror series that the studio might be reviving. According to Bloody Disgusting, Lionsgate is "taking fresh pitches" on a new movie/reboot of the Cube franchise. First released in 1997, the sci-fi/horror movie from acclaimed genre director Vincenzo Natali put a group of strangers together in a hostile environment (a big cube) that was filled with lethal booby traps (acid, spikes, a contraption that cuts you into cubes). Sound familiar? Perhaps it's just a coincidence that Lionsgate would become the home of the Saw franchise as well.

According to the outlet, Lionsgate had been working on a new movie in the series titled Cubed with Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts penning the script with filmmaker Sama Kesh set to direct. They report that the studio is "starting from scratch" with a reboot and are looking for the next take on the material.  Following the success of the first Cube, the film would spawn a sequel and a prequel, Cube 2: Hypercube in 2002 and Cube Zero in 2004. A Japanese remake of the film was also released in 2021.

The Cube movies were never a huge success at the box office at the time of their release, though the first made over $9 million on a budget of less than $400k, so a new film in the series has some legwork to do in order to really get audiences interested. Horror has always been a box office draw though and in the era where Squid Game, another "strangers compete in bizarre arena with deadly traps all around them," has become the most watched Netflix series of all-time it seems like there's room for the franchise to return, and perhaps carry a political message to boot.

In the era of the pandemic one of the most consistent audience draws at movie theaters has been horror films, even while others make their streaming debut instead. 2021 saw Spiral and A Quiet Place: Part II win the box office at least two weekends while the likes of Halloween Kills, Old, and Candyman all held the top slot when they premiered. Even this year with Scream (and arguably Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness), audiences are eager to be scared. Fittingly for Lionsgate's hopes of a Cube reboot though is another key detail, most of those horror movies were reboots of franchises anyway.