Between them, Stephen King and John Carpenter have produced some of the finest works of fiction ever to grace the horror genre.
For King, that literary oeuvre includes such classics as It, The Shining, Carrie, Salem’s Lot, Misery and Gerald’s Game – even The Dark Tower has sprinklings of horror spread throughout its eight-part saga. And then there’s John Carpenter, whose cinematic résumé touts the likes of Escape From New York, The Thing and the original Halloween movie, which is due for a sequel of its own later this year.
Turns out both King and Carpenter helped inspire Johannes Roberts on The Strangers: Prey at Night, and while doing press for his long-anticipated sequel, the director revealed his desire to remake John Carpenter’s Christine, itself an adaptation of the Stephen King classic.
I go into Sony every week, under the pretense of doing something else. Like, ‘Oh yeah, you got this news…so about Christine…’ Yeah, I don’t know what’s happening with that. I’ll get it one day.
Those comments were made to LRM Online earlier this morning, while Bloody Disgusting has posted a separate interview in which Roberts identifies Christine to be one of his all-time favorites.
It’s possibly my favorite movie. It’s certainly one of my favorites. Visually I think it’s incredible. It was just something I really wanted to play around with but it was something when I met the truck for the first time in real life, I was like yeah, there’s something about the Ford 100. It was just a great looking car and I just thought, ‘Fuck, this is going to be an amazing character in the movie.’ There’s something creepy about empty cars with the radios playing, cars in silhouette. It just became this character in its own right. It just became really fun to play around with that.
So perhaps a Christine remake is in the stars for Johannes Roberts? It’s certainly not for want of trying; all we need now is for Sony to issue the green light. Failing that, he’d also like to take a crack at Memoirs of an Invisible Man, Carpenter’s comedic sci-fi movie from 1992.
Said he:
I’m always trying to persuade someone to let me remake that one. I love the book a lot. I have a soft spot for the movie. It’s a sort of forgotten Carpenter. It’s a funny one. I think it’s a pretty cool movie and maybe it doesn’t quite land. It’s neither one thing nor another but there are some incredible visual effects.
Yeah, I think Chevy was in a strange place at that point career-wise. It’s a shame because it’s a cool movie that has been a little bit forgotten.
Closer to home, Aviron Pictures and Johannes Roberts will unleash The Strangers: Prey at Night this Friday, March 9th.