We first reported on Universal's intent to remake
John Carpenter's last real classic
They Live (1988) way back in
December of 2008 and it's taken them a while to get here but finally their project is taking shape. Refreshingly, it looks to have more on it's mind than an ordinary cut-and-paste redo and in fact they strictly don't want us calling it a remake.
Deadline are reporting tonight that Universal have set
Matt Reeves, who gatecrashed onto the scene with Cloverfield and then by some miracle didn't embarrass himself with a remake of Let The Right One In last year to write & direct a new movie based on Ray Nelson's short story
8 O'Clock in the Morning, the social satire tale that formed the basis of Carpenter's movie. The story follows a down on his luck construction worker (played by wrestler
Roddy Piper in the original!) who begins to realise that aliens are all around us controlling society and he sees them through the use of special glasses. Perfect for a gimmick 3D movie right with P.O.V. aliens? Well apparently not because Reeves will script his movie to go in a different direction. Reeves says;
I saw an opportunity to do a movie that was very point-of-view driven, a psychological science fiction thriller that explores this guys nightmare... There could be a desperate love story at the center of this. Carpenter took a satirical view of the material and the larger political implication that were being controlled. I am very drawn to the emotional side, the nightmare experience with the paranoia of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or a Roman Polanski-style film.
Now that's how you talk up a remake! Reeves pitched the project himself having stumbled across the short but it appears this one is a little ways off yet. As for what will be his next film... well he's still talking up a
Cloverfield sequel but the stars don't seem to be aligning with J.J. Abrams or Drew Goddard. And then there's
The Invisible Woman which he seems to have been trying to crack forever. Perhaps he will focus all his attention to this new take on Nelson's short story.