Julianne Moore has been cast as Margaret “Let’s pray together one last time!” White in a remake of Carrie planned for next year. This makes The Original (with Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie both giving incredibly memorable performances)
The Musical (memorable for being a Broadway megaflop, though regional and college productions are still mounted occasionally)
The TV Remake (not memorable for anything at all really)
And there have been lots of parodies and nods over the year (including the funniest drag queen I’ve ever seen doing a drag persona inspired by Carrie’s mom in New Orleans) and more than a few ripoffs.
So, do you think there’s life in the franchise yet, or should they plug it up?
Oh, why not? The original was made in 1976, ancient history to the hordes of teenagers who might go see a remake. These kids’ parents probably think the original is ancient history, too. A remake will be something new and novel to these people, it is basically a sure thing. I’d like to see it myself, I love Julianne Moore.
(That’s what they are doing now. I picture them sitting around thinking really hard of any movie or TV show that any audience, anywhere, has ever expressed even mild interest in seeing. Anything that hasn’t actually flopped is put on the ‘re-make’ list.)
:mad: No! No! No! Margaret White is ugly and enormously fat! It’s part of what makes her scary! Hasn’t anybody read the book?! You’d think the answer to that would always be “yes” when it’s a Stephen King novel, but this makes me wonder!
I don’t disagree that it is ancient history to teens, but their parents? I was a teen when it came out and I recall it vividly. (But really is there any other way to recall it?)
I was remembering her as fat (Carrie was very plump herself), but couldn’t remember as I haven’t read it in years. That would also be the way to differentiate yourself from all of the others ([the near perfect regardless of her lack of girth] Piper Laurie, Six-Feet-Under-Woman from the remake, Betty Buckley and Marin Mazzie and Sutton Foster and others from various stagings and readings of the musical) is to make her physically completely different. Basically you want a white actress the size of Gabourey Sidibe.
Carrie happens to be one of my favorite Stephen King books. I haven’t seen the original movie but I did see the television remake that came out a few years ago. They completely changed the ending and I couldn’t help but think that someone had hopes that it would turn into a series of some sort. I think another adaptation of the book could be pretty good. I think they should go the same route as the book and include flashbacks during a Congressional investigatory hearing.
The original didn’t have much of a budget, which disappointed me in some of the scenes I thought were important. Most importantly, they couldn’t afford to show what I thought was an important scene from the book: Carrie’s destructive walk home from the prom, tearing up gas pumps and starting fires as she went, burning down half the town in the process. They did show a bit of it in the TV movie, but I’d love to see it full-scale.
Oh, and the bit where Chris and Billy try to run over Carrie was laughable in the original. The TV movie did it much better, the phantom “crunch” of running into something that wasn’t there.
And hey, Chloe Moretz has been great in everything she’s ever been in, so I’ll give it a shot, even though she’s kinda young.
It was revived Off-Broadway earlier this year. I’m not sure it was all that successful that time, either. It played for a month, got extended for another month, and then closed a week into that extra month.
Usually I don’t go for remakes but I could see this working with the cast and such a strong plot. The original movie had a great cast too, and some good scenes, but have you rewatched it lately? The male lead’s horrible hairdo takes you right out of the movie! and I must not be alone in hating those split screens they used.
Plenty? I don’t know about that, hasn’t the trend lately been for people to have children later in life? My sister just had her second baby on Monday, her first child is not quite 5, and she’s 36.
Most of my friends, who are mid-twenties to mid-thirties, have either no kids, or just one, none of whom have reached double digits yet.
Now, yes, there are some 30 somethings that had kids at young ages and they are teens now, but I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say “plenty” of 33-36 year olds have teenage kids.
Nevertheless, lots of teenagers have parents that were from age zero to 10 when Carrie came out, meaning the parents certainly didn’t see it until they got older. A 40-year-old with a 15-year-old child would have been around five when the movie came out and around 25 when he or she became a parent. Perfectly common and in fact the average age of first-time parents in the USA is right around 25.
Your sister and friends are unlikely to be a representative sample of the population, much less a representative sample of the population 13+ years ago when today’s teens were born. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’s annual Child Health USA report 10% of babies born in 2009 (the most recent year for which they have data available) had mothers under age 20 and another 24% had mothers ages 20-24. So when the babies born in 2009 are 13, about 1/3 of them will have mothers age 36 and under. By the time they turn 17, 1/10 of them will still have mothers age 36 and under. I am comfortable calling that “plenty”. Since the birth rate among teens has fallen since the 1990s, there is presumably an even higher percentage of teens today with mothers age 36 and under than there will be in the 2020s.
Since “some” and “plenty” are not precise terms, it’s entirely possible that what you would call “some” I would call “plenty”. But FWIW, I didn’t actually say that plenty of 33-36 year olds have teenage kids. I said that plenty of teenagers must have parents who are 36 and under. These two statements have rather different meanings…but this hijack has gone on long enough already. The point is, Carrie is a pretty old movie. A remake is not going to be targeted at people old enough to have seen the original in the theater when it was released.
I didn’t like the way that Sue’s boyfriend seemed to be falling for Carrie in the movie. I mean, he’s supposed to be a decent guy, right? He’s going on this date because Sue convinced him it’s the right thing to do. And then he ends up kissing Carrie and acting like he’s really falling for her. That doesn’t seem very decent to me. Did it happen that way in the book? Can’t remember very well.
