Movie Remakes

The producer of the "Bourne" movie trilogy said Thursday he plans to remake a Jackie Chan-produced action comedy about a gay man who runs a mob, in Hollywood's latest of several adaptations of Hong Kong films. Andrew Tennenbaum said in an e-mail that his company, Flashpoint Entertainment, has bought the remake rights to "Enter the Phoenix" from Chan's JCE Movies. Tennenbaum and Solon So, a spokesman for Chan, declined to say how much the deal is worth.

To a screenwriter, time can feel like either a bullet train speeding toward deadlines or a long ride through a barren expanse of desert. When the western remake "3:10 to Yuma" chugs into theaters in two weeks, its screenplay credits will include a name -- Halsted Welles -- that has spent half a century riding its crooked rails.

"The Heartbreak Kid's" meager opening (it grossed just $14 million, not even winning the weekend) wasn't the kind of bellwether Hollywood was looking for. Over the next several months, the studios will flood the multiplex with a dozen other prominent (and often pricey) remakes. The thinking behind the remake is pretty straightforward, but the fact is, remakes are far from a sure thing. For every "3:10 to Yuma" hit remake, there's an "All the King's Men" dud.

"I Am Legend," which opens Friday, is the third official adaptation -- there's also a made-for-DVD poseur -- of Richard Matheson's seminal 1954 novel of the same name. Here's a look at the three previous versions: (1964) Released the same year as the apocalyptic "Fail Safe" and "Dr. Strangelove," this low-budget Italian production features the great Vincent Price in the title role.

WHAT happened to the pastel hues, the Armani suits, the sockless shoes? What about the propulsive, tropical theme music of Jan Hammer, and even the alligator? Michael Mann's "Miami Vice," which opens today, borrows its title and buddy-cops-in-Miami premise from one of the most universally recognized TV shows yet leaves out many of the elements that helped make the 1980s TV series a hit. Which poses the question: If you take the "Miami Vice" out of "Miami Vice," will the masses want to see it?

Everyone knows that there's often less than six degrees of separation among most celebrities in Hollywood, but if you ever wanted to stump your film-buff friends with a great trivia question, just try this one on for size: What do writer-director Frank Darabont ("The Shawshank Redemption"), Johnny Depp, Peter Jackson, Iggy Pop, writer-director Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential"), Hollywood novelist Bruce Wagner, director Chuck Russell ("The Mask") and producer Michael De Luca have in common?

Steven Spielberg has found his next project in the past. Hollywood's most famous filmmaker will direct a remake of the 1950 movie "Harvey," which starred Jimmy Stewart as an eccentric who claims to be friends with an invisible 6-foot rabbit. It was based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning 1944 play by Mary Chase. Spielberg is finishing work on the first of a new series of movies based on the Belgian comic strip "Tintin," which are being co-financed by Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures.

As a very young actor, Kevin Rodney Sullivan played a school-age extra in Sidney Poitier's 1970 crime drama "They Call Me Mister Tibbs!" It was Sullivan's first paying role as a film actor, and a fleeting part at that, yet it marked the beginning of Poitier's long influence over Sullivan's career. Sullivan counts Poitier's groundbreaking "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" as one of his inspirations for pursuing a Hollywood career.

In order to enjoy a movie like, say, "Charlie's Angels" or "Starsky & Hutch" as nature and Hollywood intended, a viewer needs to be both simultaneously steeped in and ironically removed from trash and celebrity culture. That is, he or she must be able to appreciate that Snoop Dogg is Huggy and not mind that Huggy is Snoop Dogg all at the same time. (This isn't nearly as hard as it sounds.

MAGGIE GRACE sees a pattern emerging in her young career. For most of the year, her home base is Honolulu, the location for ABC's popular, Emmy-nominated series "Lost," in which she plays the rich, snobby plane crash survivor Shannon. But even before Grace completed the series' first season, she was commuting to yet another island -- this one off the coast of Vancouver, Canada -- for her role in the remake of the 1980 John Carpenter horror classic "The Fog."