Last week a trio of remakes or whatever the hell we're calling them nowadays were announced or received some key updates in production. First of all, yes that picture to the right is from the 90's Saturday morning computer animated Canadian show ReBoot and while it has nothing to do with this update, whenever I hear the annoying industry buzz word "reboot" when referring to a remake I can't help but think of this show from my childhood. Moving on...

First off is a remake from some of our childhoods, but not really mine. The Neverending Story is being eyed by Warner Bros. and some other key production companies for an update. Hollywood Reporter says, "The Kennedy/Marshall Co. (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Leonard DiCaprio's shingle Appian Way are in discussions with Warners about reviving the 25-year-old franchise with a modern spin." While this isn't one of my nostalgic films, I did have a chance to watch it a couple years ago, and I gotta say, even for a kids movie, it's pretty awful. Wolfgang Petersen (the same man who brought us President Han Solo, I mean, Air Force One, directed it back in 1984 (the title actually being Die Unendliche Geschichte and it really does feel like an 80's German movie.

Next up is another modern spin, but this time on a 90's sci-fi, some might say, classic. According to Hollywood Reporter Paul Verhoeven's Arnold Schwarzeneggar vehicle, Total Recall is set for a contemporary update. Even if this film hadn't already been made, it probably would have inevitably been put into production since properties based off author Phillip K. Dick's short stories seem to be pretty hot (such adaptations include Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, A Scanner Darkly and Blade Runner. The original story (called We Can Remember It for You Wholesale) "follows a man haunted by a recurring dream of journeying to Mars who buys a literal dream vacation from a company called Rekall Inc., which sells implanted memories. The man comes to believe he is a secret agent and ends up on a Martian colony, where he fights to overthrow a despotic ruler controlling the production of air."

And finally, this last bit of news is simply an update on an already announced project. British comedian Russell Brand (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) has been set to star in a remake of the classic Dudley Moore comedy Arthur for about 3 months now, and last week Variety got the scoop of a screenwriter finally getting attached to the project. Peter Baynham (who worked on Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and this year's upcoming Bruno with Sacha Baron Cohen) Arthur is about a boozy playboy whose plan to marry into a wealthy family goes awry when he falls in love with a working class gal.

Frankly the only one of these that I'm interested in is the Arthur remake, because Russell Brand is an absolute comedic gem. Otherwise I'm getting sick and tired of all these remakes coming out of Hollywood. Let's get some original ideas and stop recycling old ones. Sure it might be fun to see a story played out with all the technology we have available to us to truly visualize what we might not have been capable of decades ago, but I'm sick of this sort of Hollywood factory assembly line cranking out the same stuff year after year. What do you guys think?