MGM has been trying to make a new WarGames movie happen since 2011. Now they’ve brought in Zak Penn, the screenwriter behind the Ed Norton Incredible Hulk and X-Men: The Last Stand, to write a new script for them. Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the team that created Gossip Girl, are going to be producing the film through their Fake Empire production company.
Apparently the last script by Today show producer Noah Oppenheim did not blow their skirts up, which leaves me little hope of being able to sell my Two Magnetos script. (It’s about Nazi hunting.) (Alternate title option: Magneto, Too!)
Attention MGM: Remember how you lost like $40 million on a Red Dawn remake? Might I suggest not spending $80 million on a WarGames remake? Just hedge your bets, maybe. Or, realize that movies made during the Cold War in the ’80s that specifically capitalized on the pants-sh*tting fear of nuclear warfare are hard to recreate these days. College kids can watch the original WarGames and laugh about it, I guess, because they didn’t spend any time in elementary school doing drills where you had to hide under your desk in case of World War III.
If you’re 19 and you’re reading this you might have thought the “Shall we play a game?” joke in Captain America: The Winter Soldier was referencing a Saw movie, because you’re 19. I guess what MGM is hoping to do is let you know that you’re wrong. WarGames was scary because personal computers were a new-ish thing, and the idea that Ferris Bueller could accidentally start a global thermonuclear war while trying to change his Biology grade is the reason no one over 50 trusts the internet.
A remake could be halfway decent, I guess. I mean, we still have computers. We just carry them in our pockets now, and use them mainly to send photos of our genitals to one another. Wait… there’s a missile joke in there somewhere.
Anyway, to me it seems as though, in terms of successful remakes, for every 21 Jump Street, there’s like ten Rollerballs. So why not try an original screenplay instead? (How about a buddy road trip dramedy starring two Magnetos?)
Via Tracking Board
(I haven’t seen Days of Future Past yet. If it’s really just Michael Fassbender and Ian McKellan traveling around the world killing Nazis and trading quips, don’t tell me, I wanna be surprised, and then angry that my script has been ruined.)