Fox may just remake Romancing The Stone with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, because what does it matter, really?

By Sean O'Neal | August 26, 2011 | 5:26pm

Aux Features Film

According to Moviehole, Fox is reportedly still serious about remaking Romancing The Stone, Robert Zemeckis’ 1984 adventure about a romance novelist and a mercenary thrust together by sexy circumstance and mutual distaste for Danny DeVito. And by “serious,” we mean reaching a state of pessimism bordering on total abandon, an anxiety perhaps prompted by the weak performance of so many other recent ’80s reboots like the Russell Brand-starring Arthur (which was announced around the same time), Conan The Barbarian, and Fright Night. In that sense, barreling on with a new Romancing The Stone anyway has become something like a cry for help, with Fox broadcasting that it just didn’t care anymore by first hooking up with Robert Luketic—whose past toxic relationships have all ended in terrible, regrettable flameouts like Monster-In-Law, Killers, and The Ugly Truth—and then ditching him for an even more dangerous trawl for “someone newish to the moviemaking scene” to come get into bed with them.

Even worse, they’re not only openly considering Luketic’s former muse Katherine Heigl for the lead—which just seems like lashing out—but even thinking about reuniting her with Heigl’s Ugly Truth co-cipher Gerard Butler, hoping to rekindle the spark that occurs when flint meets rock. (It is, after all, called Romancing The Stone, we guess.) Anyway, at this point Fox’s Romancing The Stone is essentially holed up in the bathroom and cutting itself just to feel something, and no, shouting through the locked door that maybe they’ll go with Taylor Kitsch instead is not particularly reassuring. Do you want us to break this door down? Is that you want?