When it was first reported that Dimension planned to remake Short Circuit—easily among the top movies ever made about robots having existential crises and then trying to fuck Ally Sheedy—reaction was, understandably, mixed. On the one hand, Short Circuit is loveable but hardly sacrosanct. On the other, surely there are newer stories to tell about more modern robots having different crises and trying to fuck younger actresses. Or even Ally Sheedy again, if she is into that. And then, on the giant, hammy fist, the remake suddenly was attached to director Steve Carr, best known for movies in which once-swaggering black actors and rappers got hit in the balls or reacted to the sight of poop (Are We Done Yet?, Daddy Day Care), and who had, at the time, recently branched out into fat guys falling down with Paul Blart: Mall Cop. Reaction was, understandably, balls poop fat guy fall down.
Anyway, in yet more good news/bad news, Deadline says that Carr is no longer on the project. However, he has now tossed the film over to Tim Hill, the man responsible for all those hellish visions of screeching, self-aware CGI harpies seen in Garfield: A Tail Of Two Kitties, Alvin And The Chipmunks, and Hop. Hill is currently at work drafting a new script in which Johnny Five escapes from the military and finds safe harbor with a “fractured family,” which he no doubt teaches to love again through ritual application of anthropomorphic antics and the occasional dance routine to popular songs. Such as maybe he does the robot—but for real, because he is a robot. And then, over the course of the film, he learns the true nature of life, as do we all. In fact, we are already learning things about what life is really like, right now.