Looks like that Big Trouble In Little China remake won't be a remake after all
When last we heard tell of Dwayne Johnson’s Big Trouble In Little China remake nearly two years ago, original director John Carpenter expressed oodles of ambivalence while lamenting that “nobody’s told me anything” about a revamp of his 1986 cult classic. Meanwhile, Kurt Russell, star of the original film, raised an eyebrow, noting that he hopes the team behind the remake is in it for “the right reasons.”
Johnson asserted that they were. “[That’s] why we want to bring back John Carpenter,” he said way back in 2015. “It felt like if we surrounded ourselves with the right group of people, the right writers who loved the movie too and wanted to honor it, bring on John Carpenter in some capacity…if we did that, then we have a shot at hopefully something good.”
Well, now it appears that they’ve figured out the best way to “honor it,” which isn’t to remake a one-of-a-kind film, but to try to continue its story. In short, Collider reports that the project will be a sequel, and that Johnson will not be playing Russell’s lovable slacker Jack Burton. Here’s the full quote from Hiram Garcia, president of Johnson’s Seven Bucks Productions and one of the film’s producers:
There’s a lot of things going on with [Big Trouble in Little China]. We are in the process of developing that, and let me tell you, the idea is not to actually remake Big Trouble in Little China. You can’t remake a classic like that, so what we’re planning to do is we’re going to continue the story. We’re going to continue the universe of Big Trouble in Little China. Everything that happened in the original exists and is standalone and I think there’s only one person that could ever play Jack Burton, so Dwayne would never try and play that character. So we are just having a lot of fun. We’re actually in a really great space with the story that we’ve cracked. But yeah, no remake. It is a continuation, and we are deep into development on that as well, and I think you’ll start hearing some things about that probably soon.
Hopefully “soon” comes quickly, because we’re curious what a sequel to Carpenter’s curious flick could look like, as well as whether they’ll be able to recruit Russell for a reprisal of one of his quirkiest roles. Regardless, we’re guessing he, Carpenter, and the film’s fans are at least a bit more optimistic about the project now.