Thursday, February 12, 2009

Improving on the original

Last night's rant was about the Hollywood obsession with remaking masterful movies. Sci-Fi.com posted today a story about a movie that needs to be remade. The original was decent but was severely limited in special effects and a script that offered none of the pleasures of reading John Wyndham. This novel inspired many writers of my generation, including J.G. Ballard who made the form all his bitter brutal own.

My first wife and I were such Wyndham fans that on the frantic way to the hospital we were kicking names back and forth because the birth of our boy or girl was imminent. Cathy looked at the Wyndham novel in her hand and pointed out that I was reading The Midwich Cuckoos by him as well so...our son Jospeh Wyndham Gorman was born.

This could be a great mini-series. And don't be put off by killer plants. Wyndham made it work beautifully and it can be made to work on film, too.


Stellar cast signs on to U.K.'s new Day of the Triffids miniseries

Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Eddie Izzard, Jason Priestley and Vanessa Redgrave have been lined up for The Day of the Triffids, a modern miniseries update of the classic SF novel for the BBC, Variety reported.

Power will co-produce the miniseries with Canada's Prodigy Pictures, based on John Wyndham's best-selling 1951 novel about an invasion of mobile, carrion-eating plant monsters.

Patrick Harbinson (ER) wrote the script for the two-part miniseries, which will air on the BBC later this year.

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