The Ones That Got Away: Exploring the Lost Remakes of Platinum Dunes
In November of 2001, blockbuster action director Michael Bay joined forces with producers Andrew Form and Brad Fuller to form Platinum Dunes, a production company devoted to producing low-budget commercial films. As Bay explained in a behind-the-scenes making-of documentary for the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, “The goal of the company was to do small movies where the movie is the star.” Form added, “Michael is known for making movies at a much higher-budget level and the idea behind Platinum Dunes was to make movies under the $20 million budget range, keeping them high-concept and commercial, just not spending $100 million on them.” Fuller further stated, “The concept of the company was always to find interesting directors, who have a great sense of style, who have not done a movie before.”
Throughout the 2000’s, the company specialized in remakes, reboots, and re-imaginings of famous horror properties, which aside from the aforementioned The Texas Chainsaw Massacre also included The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, starting in the late 2000’s and continuing on into the 2010’s, with the exceptions of two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films and two Ouija films, the company strayed away from remakes and adaptations, instead dedicating themselves to producing more original films, such as The Unborn, Project Almanac, Songbird, The Purge, and A Quiet Place, with the latter two spawning successful franchises of their own. However, there are five remakes they had planned on producing in the mid-to-late 2000’s that never worked out, and today, I’m going to take a look at what those planned remakes were and why all of them collapsed.
1) The Birds
Fresh off of the commercial success of the horror drama The Exorcism of Emily Rose for Screen Gems, writer-director Scott Derrickson and co-writer Paul Harris Boardman’s next project was to be a remake of suspense master Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1963 horror film The Birds for Universal Pictures. The duo would be rewriting an existing draft by Juliet Snowden and Stiles White, the team best-known for having written Knowing and The Possession. Producing alongside Bay, Form, and Fuller would be Peter Guber, Cathy Schulman, and David Zelon of Mandalay Pictures, who were no strangers to the horror genre, as the company had previously co-produced the 1997 teen slasher film I Know What You Did Last Summer, its 1998 sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, and Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow.
While Hitchcock’s film centered on a wealthy San Francisco socialite pursuing a potential love interest to a small Northern California town, this new version was said to hew much closer to its source, the original short story by famed Gothic novelist and master storyteller Daphne du Maurier, which follows a farmhand, his family, and his community in Britain during World War II. Derrickson eventually exited the project to direct another remake, that of Robert Wise’s classic science fiction film The Day the Earth Stood Still for 20th Century Fox, and the script would continue to go through an extensive rewrite process following his departure. Leslie Dixon came aboard when Naomi Watts was reported to be starring in the film, and Billy Ray would subsequently join in for further studio polishes.
In 2007, it was announced that action veteran Martin Campbell would direct, with Peter Craig being brought on for yet another rewrite, specifically for Campbell. The film’s budget was said to be in the $60 million range, which would’ve made it Platinum Dunes’ first mid-budget production. However, two years later, Campbell was forced to exit the project due to commitments to the superhero blockbuster Green Lantern for Warner Bros. Pictures. Another replacement was quickly found in the form of Dennis Iliadis, who had recently scored a hit with the remake of Wes Craven’s controversial revenge thriller The Last House on the Left. The studio was then looking to do yet another rewrite tailored towards Iliadis’ own vision for the project, which would’ve been much more in the vein of an R-rated film than Campbell’s PG-13 take.
Instead, it would lay dormant until 2014, when Iliadis had left by that point, as did Watts, and yet another replacement director was found, this time in the form of Dutch helmer Diederik van Rooijen, who would later go on to direct Sony’s supernatural thriller The Possession of Hannah Grace. Brought on for the latest revision of the screenplay was Jonathan Herman, who had also provided a rewrite of the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton for the studio. Alas, as of this writing, no further news ever came of the project.
2) The Changeling
On February 8, 2001, it was announced that television writer — and future Academy Award winner — Paul Haggis would be writing and directing a remake of Peter Medak’s haunted house horror film The Changeling, whose story follows an esteemed New York City composer who relocates to Seattle, Washington, where he moves into a mansion that he comes to believe is haunted. Haggis’ script was warmly received in a 2002 review by Jim Vejvoda of IGN, considering it to be an improvement upon the original film.
Three years later came the announcement that the project would be set up at Universal’s independent and arthouse specialty unit Focus Features, with then-newcomer David Kajganich performing a rewrite on Haggis’ screenplay. At the time, Kajganich was being hired for several projects after selling to Warner Bros. his spec script Blood Creek, including a third remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and a re-adaptation of the beloved Stephen King novel Pet Sematary, as well as making it onto the 2005 Black List with his original thriller script Death Every Day.
Two years after that came the announcement that the film would be released through Focus Features’ genre label Rogue Pictures. Bay, Form, and Fuller signed on to produce the film, having agreed to a three-year first-look deal with the studio. The Changeling was planned to be their third remake for Rogue, with their first being the remake of Robert Harmon’s psychological road thriller The Hitcher. One year later, genre titan Guillermo del Toro also joined the project as a producer, as he’s a noted fan of the original film, even referring to it as a masterpiece.
The Platinum Dunes incarnation of the project ultimately failed to materialize. While attempts at reviving the project have been made since, with directors like Jeremy Lovering and Mark Steven Johnson both taking a crack at it at separate points, those planned versions also suffered the same fate. The most recent attempt was announced in 2020, with Anders Engström directing from a screenplay by Tab Murphy, who described his take on the material as more of a re-imagining than a straightforward remake. Whether or not this incarnation actually sees the light of day remains to be seen.
3) The Monster Squad
In the spring of 2010, it was announced that director Rob Cohen’s follow-up to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor would be a remake of the cult classic horror comedy The Monster Squad, on which he had served as an executive producer, for Paramount Pictures. Bay, Form, and Fuller would join Cohen as producers on the project, as Platinum Dunes had a first-look deal with Paramount that was announced in 2009.
Hired to write the screenplay in the summer of 2010 were Brian and Mark Gunn, the brother and cousin of James Gunn, respectively. Like the original film, the remake’s story would see a group of children going up against the combined might of Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, all of whom have arrived in a small suburban town in search of a magic amulet.
Paramount’s plan for the remake was for it to be more family-oriented than the original film, in the hopes of turning it into a potential franchise. While Cohen initially had no desire to direct the remake when it was in the planning stages, he eventually changed his mind when it was confirmed to be in development. The announcement of the project, along with Platinum Dunes’ involvement, was harshly received by fans of the original film.
In 2014, Form and Fuller confirmed in an interview that the remake was officially dead, much to the delight of the original film’s co-writer and director Fred Dekker, who responded to the news of its cancellation enthusiastically in a Facebook post. Dekker has always been thoroughly opposed to anyone attempting to remake his film, and also has no interest in doing so himself. As of this writing, no further attempts have been made to resurrect the property.
4) Near Dark
What was supposed to be Platinum Dunes’ second remake for Rogue Pictures following The Hitcher that of Kathryn Bigelow’s cult classic neo-western horror film Near Dark, which tells the story of a young man in a small Oklahoma town who becomes involved with a family of nomadic American vampires. Attached to helm was music video director Samuel Bayer, who had previously turned down offers to direct the Platinum Dunes remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Amityville Horror, and Friday the 13th but would later direct their remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.
The remake’s script was initially penned by Matt Venne, whose sole writing credits at the time were 2007’s White Noise 2: The Light — a direct-to-video sequel to 2005’s White Noise — and an episode of Mick Garris’ horror anthology series Masters of Horror entitled Pelts, which was directed by giallo maestro Dario Argento. Venne’s script was revised by Michael Arlen Ross, an editor on Wrong Turn and 2001 Maniacs who had recently moved into screenwriting with the Fox Atomic horror film Turistas. Hired for yet another rewrite was Christopher Landon, fresh off of the surprise hit teen thriller Disturbia and the failed YA romantic fantasy Blood and Chocolate.
A casting breakdown for the main character, Caleb, would hit the Internet soon, with the role being retooled and modernized as a 19-year-old “party dude,” who comes across Mae at a pinball arcade. Venne was a noted fan of the original film and stated that the opportunity to pen the script for the remake was an honor. Alas, in December of 2008, Fuller confirmed in an interview that the project was officially cancelled due to similarities in conception with Twilight, which also concerned a romance between a human and a vampire.
5) Rosemary’s Baby
On March 3, 2008, it was announced that Platinum Dunes was in talks with Paramount to develop a remake of the classic 1968 horror film Rosemary’s Baby. Based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, the original film was written for the screen and directed by Roman Polanski and tells the story of Rosemary Woodhouse, a young, pregnant wife in Manhattan, New York who comes to suspect that her elderly neighbors are members of a Satanic cult and are grooming her in order to use her child for their rituals.
The Sacrifice centered around a young college girl whose older brother tragically passes away and sets out to investigate his death, soon finding that he was deep into Satanism and the occult, so she attempts to get to the bottom of it with horrifying results. However, months later, Form and Fuller confirmed in an interview that the project had been cancelled, citing that they “couldn’t come up with something where it felt like it was relevant and [they] could add something to it other than what it was.” While this was scrapped, later this year, Platinum Dunes will be bringing to the world the psychological horror film Apartment 7A, which will function as a prequel to Polanski’s film instead of a remake. Will those fifteen years worth of trying to “add something to it other than what it was” pay off? With Relic helmer Natalie Erika James calling the shots behind the camera, here’s hoping.
