Deep under the surface of Hollywood ideas, treatments and discarded scripts roams something hideous, gliding blindly and occasionally breaking the surface whenever enough buzz about it is at a certain pitch. It never takes much noise, just the aloud musings of one executive as he ponders, “Reboot?”
Not long ago, the franchise reboot replaced the one-film remake as the Hollywood trend for critics to complain about. And this most recent news doesn’t do anything to sway opinion toward the positive: Arrow In the Head is reporting that director Don Michael Paul is talking about taking over the Tremors franchise.
“After I finish up Company Of Heroes: The Fourth Reich I will be headed to Johannesburg, South Africa to reboot the Tremors franchise for Universal,” Paul wrote. Paul’s previous work includes Lake Placid: The Final Chapter and other sequels that involve colons.
As you may recall, Tremors began as a sleeper hit in 1990 starring Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, spawning three direct-to-video sequels and a short-lived TV series. It is the only recent film involving giant, man-eating sand-worms, with the exception of Beetlejuice, to meet any success. The only other that comes to mind is David Lynch’s Dune, and most know how well that went.
A reboot also suggests an entirely new cast, meaning that fans of the original are already missing franchise regular, gun-nut Burt Gummer (Michael Gross). Bacon refused to return for a second film, and Ward dropped out soon after. Add to that bad news the fact that the proposed director’s most well-known work is a Syfy original film, and nothing about this bodes well.