10 Upcoming Remakes That Might Actually Be Great

As the state of the film industry sits in a perilous place, Hollywood studios are retreating ever more inward, leaning back on reliably profitable franchise fare and rehashing their past successes rather than greenlighting original new projects.

And what's less of a gamble than a remake? Because if a story worked for one generation, there's a good chance it'll work for the next one, albeit with some contemporary tweaks. So, barely a day goes by without a remake of a hit movie being announced, and while many of them invite immediate eye-rolls for a multitude of reasons, it's also fair to say that they shouldn't all be immediately written off. After all, remakes aren't inherently bad or creatively bankrupt - they can lend new life to a shopworn concept, and make a story accessible to a whole new era of viewers.

With that in mind, the following 10 upcoming remakes actually have a strong chance of delivering solid-at-worst results, given not only the pedigree of the filmmakers involved, but the stupendous casts they've roped in to appear. As ever we'll have to wait and see how each remake turns out, but on paper the promise is obvious.

Dystopian action thriller The Running Man may not rank among the very finest of Arnold Schwarzenegger's genre vehicles, but it's nevertheless a damn entertaining movie that's still a gonzo blast to watch today.

All the same, it's pretty surprising that Hollywood waited so long to get a remake in front of cameras, and given that it's being directed by the great Edgar Wright, it's pretty tough to write this one off. More to the point, Wright's move is less a straight remake of the Schwarzenegger film than a more faithful re-adaptation of Stephen King's original novel. Plus, Wright co-wrote the script with his Scott Pilgrim vs. The World co-scribe Michael Bacall, and the cast is stacked deep, with lead Glen Powell being joined by Katy O'Brian, Josh Brolin, Lee Pace, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, and William H. Macy.

While the new Running Man will never replicate or replace the over-the-top camp of the 1987 film, with so much talent in front of and behind the camera, the odds are that it'll be a worthy new take.