Today in movies getting remakes: The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Sympathy For Lady Vengeance are getting remakes

By Sean O'Neal | November 28, 2012 | 11:16pm

Aux Features Film

Remaking, the process by which older films are improved with the addition of modern phones and removal of foreign languages, will be applied to two movies that have thus far been allowed to linger there, with their stupid rotary dials and subtitles: Charles B. Pierce's The Town That Dreaded Sundown and Park Chan-wook's Sympathy For Lady Vengeance. The former is in the very early stages of being overhauled at MGM, whose continued commitment toward forging its future with the raw ore of its past sees it commissioning new takes on 1976's true story thriller about a Texas town that dreaded sundown, because of the big-ass mosquitoes. Also, because of the hooded "Phantom Killer," who was blamed for five unsolved murders in 1946. No word on whether the new film will retain that period setting, but 1946 is old, so hopefully not. Remake!

Vengeance, meanwhile, has been in development since 2009 as a starring vehicle for Charlize Theron, who today sent out a joint press release with producer Megan Ellison announcing that they are finally moving forward on their English-language adaptation—the second of Park's "Vengeance Trilogy" to be remade so far, after Spike Lee took a crack at Oldboy—with The Departed's William Monahan on board to write and possibly direct. Of his take on the story of a woman who serves a prison term for murder she didn't commit, then seeks revenge on the actual killer, Monahan says, "This will be very American," suggesting Theron's character will be executed before she can even get around to any vengeance, and there will also be hamburgers. Remake!