The Guardian (16/Jun/2009) - The Birds and Rosemary's Baby remakes killed by wrath of fans

(c) The Guardian (16/Jun/2009)

The Birds and Rosemary's Baby remakes killed by wrath of fans

New versions of Alfred Hitchcock and Roman Polanski classics from Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes company hit the dust after bloggers express their ire

It looks like a salutary lesson for Hollywood producers in the Twitter era: never underestimate the power of the fans.

As ideas for new movies go, attempting remakes of classic horror films of the calibre of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby might be said to be just asking for trouble. Now it seems that even a powerbroker of the stature of Michael Bay, the film-maker behind the likes of Pearl Harbor and the Transformers movies, has had his dreams squashed by internet ire.

Cinematical's Horror Squad blog yesterday posted an interview with Brad Fuller and Andrew Form of production company Platinum Dunes, which is part-owned by Bay. The firm, which specialises in remakes of slasher favourites, had announced new big-screen versions of both films; but neither now looks likely to reach cinemas, and the wrath of online film fans would appear to be responsible.

Fuller – whose CV includes poorly-received remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th, as well as a forthcoming new version of A Nightmare on Elm Street – appeared to suggest that Platinum Dunes had been overwhelmed by the negativity of readers on its towards the Hitchcock and Polanski remakes.

"As you guys know, we lay ourselves out there and get annihilated out there online all day long, and that movie just opens us up to a whole different level of annihilation," he said.

"As a producer, you pursue a bunch of things and the ones that come to fruition, you make and the other ones you try and it's a good effort. At this point, we're gonna make [Nightmare on Elm Street] and we're gonna make the next Friday the 13th, I hope, and then we'll see where we are with scripts and material, but it doesn't feel like [The Birds] is up next for us."

The Birds remake had been due to hit the big screen in 2011, with Naomi Watts taking the role made famous by Hitchcock's platinum blonde muse Tippi Hedren, and Casino Royale director Martin Campbell taking the reins. But its fate appeared to be sealed when – along with the fan criticism – Hedren herself spoke out against putting a new version into production. "They called and asked what I thought about a remake of The Birds," she said. "And I thought: 'Why would you do that? Why?' I mean, can't we find new stories, new things to do?"

As for the new version of Rosemary's Baby, the 1968 paranoiac Polanski chiller, that one also seems to have withered. The new film – if it ever does get made – will now be called The Sacrifice, perhaps in an attempt to dampen the angry response.

"Whoever's criticising Rosemary's Baby ... hasn't read Scott Kosar's script," said Fuller.

"[The bloggers] haven't read that script, so when they can criticise something they know nothing about, that doesn't resonate with me," he said. "It's where they go after us personally and say that we just do it for the money and all of the things that they've repeatedly been saying, which only bothers me because if I really wanted to make money, I'd be making much bigger-budgeted movies at this point."

It's not all the wrong moves from Fuller and Form, however. The fans wanted Oscar-nominated Watchmen star Jackie Earle Haley to play Krueger in the new version of A Nightmare on Elm Street. So the duo are giving them exactly that.