From Ben-Hur to RoboCop to WarGames to Child’s Play, it’s been proven there are only a few properties that MGM may avoid giving the reboot treatment. The studio is now at it again, as The Hollywood Reporter lets us know the next classic getting an update.
Published in 1956, it didn’t take long for Richard Matheson’s sci-fi novel The Shrinking Man to get the feature film treatment. Just a year later Jack Arnold delivered his take on the story of a man who is exposed to radiation and gets smaller with The Incredible Shrinking Man. Now, well over half-a-century later, MGM is prepping another version of the film. Matheson and his son, Richard Matheson Jr., will be scripting this new take and will be “keeping the tone of the original story but updating it to modern times.”
Expect some major setpieces as well, as the new film will involve nanotechnology and is described as “an existential action movie.” The 86-year-old Matheson adds, “My original story was a metaphor for how man’s place in the world was diminishing. That still holds today, where all these advancements that are going to save us will be our undoing.” When it comes to reboots, I suppose we could do far worse, but turning this one into an action feature comes with doubts. Hopefully some solid talent comes onboard and we get a true existential film — David Cronenberg, are you around? Check out the trailer for the original below.
Are you a fan of the original? What direction could this new film go?