MGM’s bankruptcy-inspired, blinkered rehash of the ’80s—a parade of existential crisis remakes that includes RoboCop, Red Dawn, Poltergeist, and Mr. Mom so far, sort of the studio equivalent of busting out the Grecian Formula and buying a used IROC-Z—now includes a reboot of Child’s Play, the homicidal doll horror series that more or less devolved into self-parody and winking John Waters cameos by the time of 2004’s Seed Of Chucky. A remake of the original film has been rumored since about 2008, with creator Don Mancini expressing a desire to return Chucky to his darker, scarier roots, and now that rights issues have been worked out between MGM and Universal, a less campy Child’s Play McNugget is now scheduled for release sometime next year.
Back when the project was first kicking around, producer David Kirschner said he wanted to avoid making a frame-by-frame reshoot, and avowed that Mancini’s script left him “shocked with where he was taking us with expectations of the first film and pulling the rug out from under us." Still, given that Brad Dourif is returning once again to voice Chucky, and the story still involves a talking demonic doll in an era where most kids would regard talking dolls with the same blasé dispassion as a rotary phone, they certainly don’t seem to be making many overt attempts to change things up. But considering other "darker, scarier" reboots of franchises like A Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th, you can probably rest assured that the new Child's Play will contain at least 40 percent more terrifying orange and teal.
UPDATE: Michael Vollmann, marketing head for MGM, just contacted us to say that the studio does not have any current plans to reboot Child's Play, and that the "rumors are totally untrue."