Studios remake the darndest things these days. Right on the heels of the announcement of the Point Break remake and Summit choosing a new director for its Highlander reboot comes word from The Hollywood Reporter that IM Global is set to draw from a much less mainstream well for its latest rehashing. They are gearing up to remake Thai cult favorite 13: Game of Death about a man who is assigned several tasks by a mysterious benefactor who promises him millions of dollars in return for their completion. Apparently, there weren’t enough American cult films to remake.
The original 13: Game of Death is actually a really cool movie worthy of your time. In addition to being just plain entertaining, the film also works as a satire. It condemns our overly media-dependent culture without being too heavy-handed about it. That is one of the many reasons that IM’s choice of Daniel Stamm as director of their remake is so inspired. Stamm’s 2010 horror film The Last Exorcism, also a film worthy of your time, dealt with themes of media saturation in its own horrifying way. Not only that, but the smaller and more intimate the scale the 13: Game of Death remake can maintain, the more effective it will be. If The Last Exorcism is any indication, Stamm should have no problem with keeping the suspense right in the audience’s face.
It’s odd that the Hollywood Reporter article reveals a major spoiler in the film-- I won’t point to what it is exactly so as to avoid spoiling it again here, but its inclusion in the initial announcement has me scratching my head, wondering if this would is strong evidence that the screenplay for the remake will be quite divergent from that of the original. Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing; it’s just an odd way to be made aware of it.
The new 13: Game of Death is set to go into production early next year. Is it too much to hope for that it’s finished in time for Halloween 2012?
