Colin Farrell talks Total Recall and Fright Night remakes
“I didn’t want to like it when I read it”
Colin Farrell has spoken out about his attachment to remakes of beloved cult classics Fright Night and Total Recall , revealing that he’s as cynical about the re-do process as anybody.
While promoting new movie The Way Back with Collider , the Irish rogue talked about his possible attachment to the Total Recall reboot (“I’d like to. I just don’t know. I’m not sure”), discussing the amount of action that it would involve.
“There’s a good bit of action,” he says, “It kind of sits on the fence in a really good way. It’s clever and it’s well written. And there’s loads of action. I saw some of pre-visualizations already, that have been done for the world that they’re going to create and it’s wicked man.
“It’s the first time in years where I went, ‘Wow, I could be part of that? In that frame?’ It’s gone back to the original. Am I definitely doing that, are you going to ask? I dunno. I dunno.”
Meanwhile, he added that when he first picked up for the Fright Night remake he was determined not to like it – but Buffy scribe Marti Nixon’s script won him over:
“I didn’t want to like it when I read it. ‘Cause I wanted to be able to go, ‘What, they’re remaking Fright Night … Hollywood.’ So I read it and I liked it. So fuck it, I’m going to go to work.
“It’s not in competition with the original. It doesn’t negate the existence of the original. The original is still around. It might find a new audience. If it’s not an hour and fifty minutes of entertainment then we screwed up.”
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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.