While in recent years David Cronenberg has moved away from the body horror films that he made his name on — the talky, brainy period movie “A Dangerous Method” is about as far away his previous work as he’s gotten so far — “The Fly” was arguably the most popular of any of those movies. Arriving in the middle of a 1980s run that included “Scanners,” “Videodrome” and “Dead Ringers,” the film was a remake of the 1958 Vincent Prince picture but it’s a distinct Cronenberg-ian movie through and through. The film was followed up four years later by the pretty terrible “The Fly II,” the feature debut of special effects and make-up Chris Walas, who had previously worked on the original “The Fly” (and won an Academy Award for his efforts), “Scanners” and would later lend his hand to “Naked Lunch.” At any rate, that movie pretty much killed any potential of a franchise that Fox had with the property.
Fast-forward two decades to September 2009, and the first news that Cronenberg would write and potentially direct a possible remake of his own film. And then, that was pretty much the last anybody heard about it. But doing the rounds at the New York Film Festival today Shock ‘Til You Drop caught up with the director and gave a surprising update about the status of the film.
“‘The Fly’ is not exactly a remake, it’s sort of a sequel, kinda,” Cronenberg explained. “Yeah, that was a thing. I’ve written a script of that, and I don’t know if that’s going to really happen, but that has to do with Fox.” This is the first we’ve heard that only is it a sequel, but that a script is actually finished. As Cronenberg seems to indicate, it looks like it’s up to Fox whether or not they want to go ahead with it.
So that’s about all there is for now, and there’s no indication that even if Fox choose to flip the switch on it that Cronenberg would direct it himself. So file it away with “Eastern Promises 2” as a potential project, but at this moment, Cronenberg will be focusing on getting “Cosmopolis” over the finish line. “A Dangerous Method” plays NYFF this week and hits theaters on November 23rd. You can read our interview with Cronenberg right here and look for more later this week.
