Depending on your personal sway when it boils down to remakes, you may be jumping for joy at today’s news or shrugging your shoulders in apathy. The next property mined from the back catalogue of Films That Are Fine As They Are hails from The Walking Dead producer Gale Anne Hurd, whose 1988 movie Alien Nation has been selected for renovation.
A sci-fi buddy cop movie with a heavy social conscience, the plot revolved around a future Earth recently beset upon by aliens. In an attempt to get along, humans and aliens – who look like people with shoddy prosthetics – integrate and begin to live somewhat harmoniously. James Caan starred as a prejudiced cop whose new partner, played by Mandy Patinkin, is an extraterrestrial called Sam Francisco. A reasonable success at the time, it managed to inspire a short-lived TV series, a brief comic run and several TV movies.
Now, 20th Century Fox has spied something worth salvaging from the property, as a brand new movie has been sent into development. Neither original writer-director Gregory Baker nor Hurd will be involved in the remake, and the only talent attached at the moment are Iron Man scribes Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, who have been tasked with rewriting this updated tale. The studio is hoping to take the story back to the aliens’ arrival on Earth, using the reinvented Planet Of The Apes franchise as inspiration. Should Alien Nation prove to be another worthwhile remake, there are of course preliminary plans already in place for future instalments.