Jamaican filmmaker Perry Henzell‘s 1972 classic The Harder They Come was a groundbreaking film for a number of reasons. A tale of an aspiring reggae star named Ivanhoe Martin (played by Reggae legend Jimmy Cliff) who gets caught up in a life of public crime that only helps popularize his record, it was the very first feature-length film to come out of the then decade old country. When it eventually made its way to America in 1973, it became a massive hit with midnight movie audiences.
But The Harder They Come‘s greatest influence was on music, not film. Its soundtrack, made up of singles released in Jamaica between 1967 and 1972 from Jimmy Cliff, The Maytals, Desmond Dekker, and more, gave international audiences their first real taste of that style of reggae music. Besides having a heavy influence on English punk rockers, this record is what paved the way for Bob Marley to break overseas.
So the idea of a remake, billed as a re-imagining featuring contemporary reggae and at least partially set in London, will probably make dedicated fans more than a little squeamish. Variety reports U.K. production company Xingu Films (Moon) is teaming up with Canada’s Conquering Lion Pictures and producer Justine Henzell (Perry Henzell’s daughter), to get the movie off the ground.
Almost nothing else has been revealed about the production other than the fact that it will be written by Chris Salewicz, who penned the Caribbean’s most financially successful movie to date, Third World Cop.
Production hopes to have a draft ready for Cannes so that principal photography can begin in 2012. The target is to time the film around the 50th anniversary of Jamaican independence and the 40th anniversary of The Harder They Come.
I, for one, think this whole thing sounds like a bad idea.
What do you think? Should this remake even exist?