15 Planned Horror Film Remakes That Thankfully Never Happened
2. Near Dark
There were plans in 2007 for a mid-budget remake of Kathryn Bigelow's supremely underrated 1987 vampire Western Near Dark. A casting call had been sent out and scripts had been written. Samuel Bayer (A Nightmare on Elm Street remake) was set to direct. And then Twilight happened and the project was cancelled. There were concerns that it would be seen as being too similar to the tween vampire hit. As Platinum Dunes producer Brad Fuller explained in 2008:
Near Dark is probably not going to happen. think that Twilight was the same type of thing we were going for although Near Dark was a much darker, sexier, rated R version of that. But Im concerned that, conceptually, that Near Dark and Twilight are too similar in terms of a vampire movie. For now, that movie is on hold.
There's no doubt that Near Dark, a love story between two young vampires, would be compared (rightly or wrongly) with Twilight. Around the time of the remake's cancellation, a Near Dark blu-ray was released with brand new cover art that was very similar to Twilight, causing many fans of the original to boycott it out of principal.
