Breck Eisner to remake Flash Gordon and The Creature from the Black Lagoon

Breck Eisner is currently busy directing the remake of George Romero's The Crazies.

It looks like he has got a taste for remakes as Arrow in the Head chatted to him about Flash Gordon and The Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Flash Gordon has always been a character I've enjoyed. The old comic by Alex Raymond has some beautiful artwork, as does the work by Al Williamson. The Buster Crabbe black and white serial was always fun to watch (loved the spacecraft designs in that one) and the Sam Jones Flash Gordon film was a camp masterpiece - Max Von Sydow was Ming the Merciless. The less said about the recent TV series the better.

Here is what Eisner had to say about his version of Flash Gordon:

"We broke story with the writers [Matt] Sazama and [Burk] Sharpless for the last five or six months or so. They went to draft just as we started shooting, and they're going to get to me a draft at wrap. I'll read it and do notes and we'll do a polish on that and give it to the studio a couple months from now. Hopefully the studio will like it and we'll go forward. It's a big movie and the studio has got to love the script."

"The thing about FLASH is, you've got to throw away the 80s version of it. I want it to be intense, aggressive, gritty and real. For me it's about reinventing FLASH - we're still staying true to the adventure origins of it, and the adventurous spirit in that movie, absolutely. It's this man brought to another planet and uniting the disperate groups on Mongo, but there is a gritty, intense, dynamic, active quality to the movie. Very modern. It's not camp."

I quite like the sound of this revamp. Lots of adventure and action is always good.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon is one of those sci-fi horror classics of yesteryear. I was lucky enough to get it in a DVD box set from my wife last Christmas. It is a great film, although some of the dialogue and acting is a bit of its time. The creature suit and underwater filming though is simply stunning even after all these years. What Eisner has to say about this remake sounds promising:

"I want it to be scary. It's a bigger movie, so it's not an R rated scary, it's gonna be a PG-13 scary. CREATURE takes you to a place you've never been before, it's one of the last untamed places on the edge of the Earth where you find this creature that has been living and hiding there forever, basically. It's definitely going for a dark adventure tone, but I want it to be scary."

This is definitely ripe for a remake.

Out of the two I think the Flash Gordon one is the most exciting, yet the Black Lagoon remake may end up being the most satisfying.

Which of the two remakes are you most excited about?

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