Carrie remake

Yet another brilliant horror film of the past will succumb to the filthy Hollywood remake machine when the Brian DePalma/Sissy Spacek high school bullying classic Carrie gets a revisit, this time by MGM and Screen Gems.

The Carrie project was first hinted at last Spring when it was reported that Robert Aguirre-Sacasa (a stage writer who polished up Broadway's Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) had taken on the script for the reimagining of the classic Stephen King novel of the same name. Today we get word from the studio (via Deadline) that Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Pierce has been brought on board to direct the Carrie remake from Aguirre-Sacasa's script. Pierce's most recent directorial project was 2008's Stop-Loss that starred Ryan Phillipe and Abbie Cornish.

Word has it that Aguirre-Sacasa's script will operate in territory more faithful to King's novel than to the popular 1976 DePalma version about a frail teenage girl with psychic powers who is bullied relentlessly by the girls at her high school, and browbeaten into a constant state of guilt by her fanatically religious mother.

While we've gone on the record numerous times as serious haters of this whole Hollywood remake binge, we think the only way this thing could gain ANY credibility (as insignificant as it might be) would be if Sissy Spacek were brought on in the role of Carrie's mother. Even then, this is a terrible idea and would certainly be a bad career move for Spacek as the original was a lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon carried by Spacek's career-best performance. If done right, this could, however, be a great vehicle to launch the career of a young up-and-coming actress.

Some may remember the previous failed attempts to capitalize on Carrie's cult popularity such as the terrible 1999 sequel The Rage: Carrie 2, and 2002's made-for-TV version that was set up as a pilot for a series but was never developed due to poor ratings. Then of course, there's the 1987 Stratford-upon-Avon, England stage play that never got off the ground due to script and technical problems that included a near decapitation of the main star by a set piece. Apropos or a curse?

So, there you have it. Many reasons to leave this thing alone. Let's let those craving a Carrie fix get it from the forthcoming Off-Broadway run of Carrie: The Musical that will open on March 1. How might the song about Carrie's first period go?