According to several websites, the 1954 classic giant bug movie, THEM! is headed for a reboot, which means that it thankfully won't be an out-and-out remake.
THEM! is one of my favorite sci-fi films of the 50's because of it's suspense (it's treated skillfully as a mystery in the beginning), interesting locale (the desert) and sheer terror when the giant ants show up.
Oscar-winning composer, Michael Giacchino is slated to direct. I suspect the ants will be CGI'd which could be problematic, but since Giacchino is more of a fan of black and white monster movies and less so of slasher films, the blood, gore and evisceration may be kept to a minimum.
Oscar winner from N.J. to direct new version of monster movie classic
Colossal mutant ant monsters terrorized Earth 69 years ago. Now humankind must face a new challenge.
By Amy Kuperinsky | January 05, 2023 | NJ.com
The 1954 sci-fi movie “Them!” is getting a reboot at Warner Bros.
Deadline reports the director for the job is none other than Michael Giacchino, the Oscar-winning composer from New Jersey.
Giacchino, 55, a Riverside native who grew up in Edgewater Park, knows a little something about black-and-white monster movies.
He helmed his first full-length feature, “Werewolf by Night,” a black-and-white Marvel TV special that arrived on Disney+ in the run-up to Halloween last year.
The tale, based on the “Werewolf by Night” Marvel comics Giacchino read as a kid, stars Gael García Bernal as werewolf Jack Russell. The character made his debut in the ’70s, but Giacchino’s TV adaptation, which made quite an impression with striking scenes and offbeat humor, took cues from 1930s noir and horror films. “Bride of Frankenstein” (1935) and “King Kong” (1933) are some of his favorites.
In an interview with NJ Advance Media last fall, Giacchino said he much preferred monster movies to slasher films.
“To me, they’re allegories for real life,” he said. “These monsters represent people that have problems and need help. The wolf man doesn’t want to be the wolf man, you know?”
The “Them!” remake will mark Giacchino’s big-screen directorial debut.
The original film, based on a story from George Worthing Yates, was adapted for the screen by Ted Sherdeman and Russell Hughes and directed by Gordon Douglas. Authorities battle massive insects born in a soup of radioactive dust in the New Mexico desert.
Giacchino aims to update the fears at the heart of the film — the nuclear age — for a contemporary audience.
“What I love about ‘Them!’ is exactly what it’s called: ‘Them!’” Giacchino told Deadline. “It’s about the other, the unknown which one refuses or can’t understand. The current version of ‘Them!’ is about immigration, and to tell a story about the subject through a lens of this insane science fiction monster movie.”
He has been venturing more into directing after a dazzling career as a composer for film and TV — his recent films include “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” “The Batman,” and “Lightyear.” In 2010, he won an Oscar for best score for the animated movie “Up.” (He was also nominated for “Ratatouille.”)
In fact, he’s most of the way to an EGOT, having also won an Emmy for “Lost” and three Grammys for “Ratatouille,” “Up” and “Married Life.”
As with “Werewolf by Night,” which of course had an impressive score, Giacchino will create the music for “Them!”
Giacchino’s brother, director Anthony Giacchino, who won an Oscar in 2021 for the short documentary “Colette,” will also be a part of the project, he says. Anthony, who grew up making movies with his brother in New Jersey, directed “Director by Night,” a Disney+ companion documentary to “Werewolf by Night.”
THEM is a classic and as you say works because it combines a small threat which is enigmatic and weirdly noirish, and then turns on the jets to deliver a slam-bang big monster epic. There have been more than modern giant bug movies over the decades, and none have the punch of THEM. I don't expect a modern version to have it either.
ReplyDeleteThe ants are already out of the bag, as it were.
ReplyDelete