Horror has become not only big business for studios but a lot of feature films released in theaters have done exceedingly well with audiences leading to some impressive box office results, as long as the budgets are reasonable. While Universal Pictures is hellbent on making sure they’re making their presence known with a string of remakes from within their Universal Monsters franchise, another studio is getting into the remake game and tackling a classic horror character that hasn’t been touched since 1988.

The Wrap reports that Warner Bros. has selected David Bruckner (“The Ritual”), who was behind the recent “Hellraiser” reboot, for a reimagining of “The Blob.” Bruckner is set to both write and direct this new take on with David S. Goyer (“Foundation”) producing via his production company, Phantom Four. The beloved horror film was first released in 1958 with a fresh-faced Steve McQueen starring, a direct sequel in 1972 called “Beware! The Blob,” and the Chuck Russell remake in the 1980s from a script penned by Frank Darabont (“The Walking Dead,” “The Mist,” “Shawshank Redemption”).

In the original, the blob is an alien purple sentient ooze that consumes organic creatures and with each meal starts to grow in size, once big enough it starts to eat humans and gets to the point where the small town is at the mercy of this giant eating machine. The Darabont remake from 1988 tried to add its own spin on the mythology by hinting the blob’s origin was outer space in the first act of the film. Only to reveal it was, in fact, a secret U.S. government bio-weapon experiment gone wrong and the armed handlers don’t exactly care about the townspeople getting gobbled up by the blob if it means their new weapon is kept classified from the rest of the world.

While the original had inventive but outdated special effects the 1980s version has some of the best practical gore effects ever put on film and is criminally underrated given that the slasher sub-genre seemed to rule that decade. Given the amounts of practical effects and makeup used in his Bruckner’s “Hellraiser” remake at 20th Century Studios, there is a glimmer of hope he’ll attempt to use as many in-camera effects as possible.

This wouldn’t be the first time that someone has attempted a fourth incarnation of “The Blob” as directors Rob Zombie (“House of 1,000 Corpses,” “Halloween”) and Simon West (“Con Air”) had tried to make their own versions of the film with the latter being able to coax Samuel L. Jackson into a leading role. However, it doesn’t sound like the same people are going to be involved in this more recent project and it’s not clear how this remake at Warners differs from the other three films.

SOURCE: THE WRAP