For the most part, remakes, reboots, and revivals still get a bad rep from film fans. Why remake a classic when you can just watch the classic? Well, sometimes, we get something special like Leigh Whannel’s take on “The Invisible Man,” and our faith in remakes grows just a little bit. Well, “The Walking Dead” producer-director Greg Nicotero thinks that he and Robert Rodriguez could make a pretty great remake of “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
Speaking to ComicBook.com, Nicotero talked about remakes and reimaginings because he’s currently one of the folks behind the “Creepshow” remake that airs on Shudder. And with this experience and absolute love of the original, the filmmaker believes that he and Robert Rodriguez could team up for a great ‘Creature’ film.
“I think for any creature, monster kid, ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ is the quintessential monster movie,” Nicotero said. “I think Robert Rodriguez and I always talk about like, ‘Hey, man. Maybe we should co-direct a “Creature from the Black Lagoon” movie,’ because he and I have identical tastes. We love ‘Jaws.’ We love ‘The Thing.’ We love ‘Escape from New York’ and ‘Blade Runner.’ We toy with the idea of like, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we remade “Creature from the Black Lagoon?”’ And I know they’ve been trying to do it forever, but, for me, that’s the quintessential Universal Monster movie.”
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Of course, even knowing Nicotero’s love of the original and Robert Rodriguez’s filmmaking past, there are going to be folks that doubt these two could do the original ‘Creature’ any justice. But Nicotero believes he knows the way to rise above the rest of the remakes that are being made nowadays.
“All of these remakes and retellings and stuff, the one thing that they need to have is they need to have respect and passion for the genre,” Nicotero explained. “It’s not just taking a title and putting your own spin on it because anybody can put whatever spin they want on it because everyone’s going to have a different approach, but you have to have respect for the original material.”
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He added, “I feel like that, for me, is one of the things that really drives me, because I have respect for the storytelling that was done on the original ‘Creepshow’ and everything that George did, everything that [Stephen King] has done. So, to have the ability to approach a project like that with respect, I just feel is the key ingredient in the success of rebooting anything.”
Obviously, Universal is knee-deep in figuring out how to utilize the Universal Monsters brand, with new films such as “Dracula,” “Renfield,” and “Wolfman” all in various stages of development. So, who knows? Maybe a Nicotero/Rodriguez ‘Creature’ film won’t be far behind?
