Candyman remake director developing a "reimagining" of Julia Roberts' Sleeping With The Enemy
Aux Features FilmAccording to Deadline, up-and-coming filmmaker Nia DaCosta—who directed last year’s Little Woods and has been tapped to take on the Candyman remake—is developing a “reimagining” of Sleeping With The Enemy for Fox Searchlight. The original came out in 1991 and starred Julia Roberts, and it concerned a woman faking her death with an elaborate plot involving secret swimming lessons so she could try and escape her abusive husband. We have no idea what DaCosta’s “reimagining” will look like, but this is the kind of project that could go in tons of different directions. All you really need is the recognizable title, the basic plot points of someone escaping an abusive spouse, and maybe a distracting cameo from Julia Roberts. If Fox Searchlight wants to go the most obvious route, it could even do a basic gender-swap, but we have to make it explicitly clear that it sounds like a terrible idea and the studio absolutely should not do it.
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Doesn’t Lifetime show 5 different re-imaginings of this movie a day?
Not in IMAX 3-D.
In between showings of “Oh My God-The Baby!” https://www.theonion.com/oh-my-god-the-baby-1819583748
I thought this was now just called “Investigation Discovery Channel”
Yeah but how could you ever recast Patrick Bergin’s moustache?
Candyman
“Hollywood out of ideas” admits director
America responds with “You did a long time ago!”
Personally I’m just tired of films and tv shows where women are stalked, assaulted, raped and murdered to invoke a cheap, salacious thrill in the audience. Who’s really clamoring for yet another iteration of that story to get made?
I feel bad for Patrick Bergin. There was nothing he could do to escape being viewed as mustachioed wifebeater husband.Also, the American Dad episode Julia Rogerts is the only remake of Sleeping with the Enemy you need.
If you really want to feel sorry for him, try to sit through some of his scenes on Eastenders last year, where he was a hammy, hammy gangster who only veered away from unintentional hilarity (complete with the old chestnut of having the cane he can use to beat the hell out of people with) with glibly presented racism (holding a black man at gunpoint and making him beg for his life…with absolutely no indication that viewers were supposed to see this as wrong).
I always think of him as the way more convincing Robin Hood from the early 90s.
For me he’ll always be the less-insane IRA terrorist in Patriot Games. That movie becomes pretty nuts by the end, but the scene where he apologizes to the nebbishly bookstore owner before Sean Bean shoots him is a pretty great little moment.
This is a good place as any to pitch a Rose Madder movie. Come on, the book’s not bad!
For the genderswapped version, I would go with Natasha Lyonne and Joe Kinneman.
It will be hard to improve on the original’s bad-ass ending.
If they were to remake Sleeping With The Enemy, I would hope they would go for a more serious, less popcorn thriller take on the subject and jettison the cartoonish, seemingly omniscient villain in the latter half of the film for a more realistic approach. That probably goes against why a studio would want to remake Sleeping With The Enemy, but it seems like the most responsible thing to do if they plan to move forward with this project in today’s climate.I’d imagine Jordan Peele’s Candyman remake will be even more socially conscious than the original. That he hired Nia DaCosta to direct the Candyman remake would seem to indicate they share a vision of socially conscious horror movies. So her approach to a Sleeping With The Enemy remake may take the issue much more seriously than “Hollywood reboots Julia Roberts thriller” suggests. At least, I hope.
Xavier Legrand’s César-winning film Custody (which I just found out wasn’t even on the eligibility list for this last Oscars—ugh) just about mastered how to make this kind of premise sobering through realistic performances and situations, while still delivering a nerve-wracking nail-biter. [A.A. Dowd’s review here.]
Didn’t JLo already do the remake?
No cameo by Eric Bieniemy, no sale.
For a moment I was confused and thought that the new Candyman film’s plot was going to be a reimagining of Sleeping with the Enemy, and now that is the only Candyman remake I want to see.
Yes, because God forbid Hollywood comes up with an original idea or title.What if 3/4 of all new music to come out this year was cover songs?
For some reason I know have a hankering for a Double Jeopardy remake.