EXCLUSIVE: MGM will reboot the 1983 thriller War Games, and the studio has set Seth Gordon to develop the film to direct. Gordon, who made his breakthrough with the gaming documentary The King of Kong, most recently directed the New Line comedy Horrible Bosses, with Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Jamie Foxx. The reconstituted MGM has been going to town with remakes — landing Jose Padilha to direct Robocop and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to script Carrie — but the John Badham-directed War Games is one that seems particularly reboot-able.
The original starred Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy as computer prodigies who finds a back door into a military computer program. They think they are playing games with the computer only to find they could trigger WWIII if the computer launches nuclear missiles at the Russians. In terms of computer games, kids were playing Pong back then; the level of sophistication with vidgames and the Internet in the digital age opens a wealth of possibilities, and Gordon will be given a wide berth to create a new take on the tale. The deal also reunites him with MGM toppers Roger Birnbaum, Gary Barber and Jon Glickman, who were at Spyglass when Gordon directed Four Christmases there. Gordon’s repped by WME and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.
WarGames is my all-time favorite movie. I think a remake could be a lot of fun, but the original will always be the best in my book.
This can only go poorly, and I loved “The King of Kong.” War Games has a naivete about it, and is a well-paced, well-acted story that exposed a world of early hackerdom rarely seen in the public eye.
Lemme see… I’ll bet Shia Labouef gets the part. And as his sidekick, who, Mila Kunis?
Hollywood studios suffer from a bankruptcy of ideas not only in remakes (say it with me now… “ARTHUR”!) and in original scripts.
Goddammit, I’d piss on a spark plug if I thought it’d do any good to help this remake!
Some movies should not be re-made.
12 Angry Men
The Karate Kid
War Games
Tron
end of line.
Would rather see a well done adaption of Ender’s Game.
Exactly, even if it is from Bean’s perspective, like the last hundred potential scripts were.