Anton Yelchin heads up Fright Night

With all the hoopla surrounding Sam Worthington’s star turn in Terminator: Salvation (not to mention certain on-set rants), it’s easy to forget that possibly the best thing about that futuristic sequel was Anton Yelchin.

The actor, who played a young version of Kyle Reese, also showed up in last year’s Star Trek reboot. But again, he was overshadowed by Pine and Quinto.

Seems somebody remembers him, though, as Yelchin has been recruited to star in Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night remake.

Heat Vision report that Yelchin will play teenager Charley Brewster, who becomes convinced that his new neighbour is a vampire. Problem is, nobody believes him.

The flick’s been written by Buffy and Mad Men ’s Marti Noxon, which means that hopefully the remake should feature the requisite scares and smarts of those golden TV programmes, and not become a slur on the underrated original.

And with Yelchin on board, our hopes for a film at least on par with the 1985 original have been buoyed after the initial frustration (and yes, rages that almost turned us green) over the pillaging of yet another genre classic.

Collider spoke to producer Mike De Luca earlier this year, who said that the flick would deal in the same themes of “the transition from boyhood to manhood and the acts of a predatory older man on younger female and male characters”.

He added that they want to have “more scares than laughs” in this new Fright -fest. Which works for us, as long as they’re not the cheap, loud, blaring-slasher-music scares that so many teen horrors fall back on nowadays.

Yelchin will be seen next in Jodie Foster’s The Beaver , alongside Mel Gibson.

Warming up to the remake?

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.  

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