Breck Eisner says THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON is "not a monster"

Breck Eisner (Sahara) still believes he will be shooting two remakes this year - an updated version of George A. Romero's The Crazies which we spoke about in February and his long talked about redo of the classic 1950's Universal horror film The Creature from the Black Lagoon. As far as the Creature goes, he has revealed that it took him six months to design a look that he was fully happy with and that it was Mark McCreery - whose impressive work on Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean designs will be the guy to praise or criticise when the film begins shooting in the Amazon jungle in November/December time. Eisner told Shock Till You Drop his approach for the movie...

"We debated tone a thousand times. For me tone is the most interesting thing a filmmaker has and so the Creature is a creature, it's not a monster. That's my number one thing about the movie. We're not going to turn him into a monster. He's still going to be empathetic, he's still going to be deadly, he's still going to have a misguided means of expressing his interests in a woman, but it's uniquely the Creature. It's empathy for a deadly creature and tone plays a big part of that...it will deliver of action and excitement, but I want it to be scary. The Creature was scary when it first came out in '54 - it's not scary today - but that's what updating means to me, updating the tone of the original."

If the film does indeed shoot later this year then we can probably expect it for a Summer 2010 release (2009 at a push) and the site hint that Universal will see this as almost a Summer tentpole release similar to what they did with The Mummy and also (but forced because of delays) The Wolf Man remake. And with a Summer tentpole comes the fan expectation criteria of a fast paced, explosive, joke driven, adventure film - which is not how this should be handled. I adore the 1954 Jack Arnold original but I'm struggling to see how a remake could possibly work. The tone, the black and white filming, the actors, the way it was made - everything came together perfect for Arnold and it's not at all like The Wolf Man where you have a talented actor who has been so desperate to play the part his whole career that you know his performance along will be enough to do the original some justice.