Remakes OTD: The Big Chill, You Are So Handsome

VARIETY: Screen Gems to reheat 'Big Chill'
Film to be remade with African-American cast
By MICHAEL FLEMING
Posted: Tue., Jun. 12, 2007, 7:30pm PT

Screen Gems will remake Lawrence Kasdan's 1983 pic "The Big Chill."

The movie will likely be retitled, but the original script by Kasdan and Barbara Benedek will be used as a template; the storyline will be contemporized and the cast will be African American.

Screen Gems owns the rights and will hire a screenwriter to do a polish on the original script. Kasdan is not involved.

Regina King will be part of the ensemble, and she will produce with her sister, Reina King, and Will Packer ("Stomp the Yard").

Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper is out to directors and intends to get the picture in production by year's end.

The remake will stick closely to the original storyline, in which seven college friends reunite over a weekend at a South Carolina house for the funeral of a pal. As they get reacquainted, they become introspective about how their lives turned out.

The cast of the new film will be in their 30s, which means the characters will have matriculated together in the 1990s instead of the '60s. Music will be a big part of the film, though the redo may stick with the original's fixation on Motown classics.

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Those trippy, idealistic '90s! We were so young and crazy then - trying to change the world. What happened to those ideals... that... we clung... huh? Does this make any sense to anybody? Granted, we're all probably sick and tired of Woodstock mythologizing, but if you want to do a 'how-we've-changed' story, the last twenty years doesn't offer a lot of dramatic contrast. I guess they'll have to make the characters radical without a turbulent political backdrop, which seems kind of diluted.

PS - Since 'The Big Chill' is a kinda-remake-or-ripoff-depending-on-who-you-ask of 'Return of the Secaucus 7', this new film will be the third version of this story.

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VARIETY: Nabatoff to remake French hick pic
'Handsome' was sleeper hit
By ALISON JAMES
Posted: Tue., Jun. 12, 2007, 8:28am PT

PARIS -- Gaumont has inked a deal with U.S. producer Diane Nabatoff to co-develop a U.S. remake of French sleeper hit "You Are So Handsome."

Low-budget hick pic, produced by Film Par Film's Jean-Louis Livi and Gaumont's Sidonie Dumas, took sixth place at the French box office in 2005, nabbing 3.5 million admissions.

Pic's scribe Isabelle Mergault's helming debut also sold well internationally and has done brisk business in Germany -- where it made E1.2 million ($1.6 million) at the box office -- Spain, Belgium, Switzerland and Israel.

Deal with Nabatoff, who's working on George Clooney starrer "White Jazz," is valid for 12 months, Gaumont said. The French major did not give further details.

"You Are So Handsome" stars Michel Blanc as a widowed farmer who decides he must acquire another wife to cook and clean.

Despite his purely pragmatic intentions, his mail-order Eastern European wife brings romance into his life.

Gaumont recently reteamed with Livi and Mergault for her soph pic, "Enfin veuve" (A Widow at Last), which finished shooting in May and is slated for release in January.