Remake Watch 2009: An American Werewolf in London, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Bloody-Disgusting has the exclusive on John Landis' An American Werewolf in London being remade by The Weinstein Co., while The Hollywood Reporter has the information on Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.

Aside from the fact that John Landis' original film is a classic, werewolves are inherently boring. They're kind of like the lame cousin of zombies that nobody talks about, and even in that sense, Hollywood totally ran the zombie train into the ground (with the 10-ton vampire caboose bringing up the rear), so a werewolf movie just sounds like the s---ty version of a boring idea. It's too bad, the exception was The Wolf Man, but then Mark Romanek quit and they replaced him with Joe Johnston, and my interest was permanently dead. Matt counters by saying they're "a good metaphor", but I don't think Hollywood has any interesting ideas for werewolves (as evidenced by their ideas for the aforementioned zombies and vampires) that would involve metaphors and s---.

As for Don't, produced by Guillermo Del Toro and probably starring Guy Pearce, I just think of the Nickelodeon show "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" and how much more I'd rather see that.

I remember recently I was in a bookstore, and someone was talking about the Three Stooges movie, and he was telling a customer he heard on the radio that Jim Carrey, Sean Penn, and Guillermo Del Toro were in it. Except he said Gallardo Del Toro, or Guerrero St. Toro, or something really stupid. Thanks, bookstore guy. Now whenever I hear Guillermo Del Toro's name, I'll always think of that. He even knew it was wrong on a subconscious level, because he was surprised the filmmakers had cast the director of Pan's Labyrinth. Of course, he meant Benicio Del Toro, who is starring in The Wolf Man, so I tied that story back around. Kinda.

It was also announced that the It's Alive remake is going direct-to-DVD via First Look Studios after WB dumped it.

Remake Watch 2009:
15 film remakes announced
4 film remakes released
2 tv remakes released
2 reboots announced
2 reboots released
1 remakes announced/released direct-to-DVD
1 TV remake

A "reboot" is defined by Remake Watch as a new attempt at a film series with new actors playing old characters (thus, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Race to Witch Mountain are excluded). Sequels to remakes (The Pink Panther 2, Halloween 2) are ignored.