Chucky is headed back to the big screen, whether you wanted it to or not. HorrorBid reports that after years of trying to get off the ground, the Child’s Play remake finally has the greenlight to start production later this year for a 2012 release. The reboot has been ready to go for a long time, but was held up due to a dispute between MGM (who owns the rights to the original Child’s Play) and Universal (who owns the rights to all the sequels). The two studios have kissed and made up, and now the deal is set into place. This reboot of Child’s Play was written by Don Mancini who wrote all five movies of the original series and Brad Dourif is returning to the voice the murderous doll. So…they are just pretty much doing the same thing all over again. That’s a good use of time and money.
As most of you are aware, with the last two movies in the franchise, Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, the series went into a more comedic and even self-referential direction. With this reboot, they are aiming to get back being less goofy and more scary like the first two (Child’s Play 3 doesn’t count due to the fact it’s horrible). Brian Gallagher of MovieWeb actually spoke to Mancini back in September 2008 and here’s what he had to say about the darker direction:
“That’s really our goal with this next movie, bottom-line, was to make it scary again. After having, I think, rather successfully mined the horror-comedy aspects of this concept over the course of Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, the fans are really telling us that they want it to be scary again. Doing the remake just provides us with a really good opportunity to bring it home, so to speak.”
Essentially, I read that as “we’re pulling a mulligan because we screwed up the series,” which makes sense since the universe the original five are in has become too goofy for an actual sequel to be taken seriously. I’m still against it in some ways, despite the original talent being involved. The horse is dead, stop beating it.
Regardless, Child’s Play will come out sometime in 2012 but hopefully not in 3D.