Peter Jackson to Remake “Dam Busters”
Peter Jackson has just announced that he will be producing a remake of the British war film “Dam Busters.” The film chronicles the development and use of bouncing bombs to blow up German dams WWII. The original film, which Jackson admired as a boy (the original was released almost a decade before he was born, in 1954), suffered from the fact that much of the information about the actual military project had still been classified by the Royal Air Force. This is not the case anymore, which should mean that Jackson’s version will certainly be an improvement in terms of historical authenticity.
Jackson had looked into doing this project a decade ago but was surprised to find out that the rights to the film had already been purchased by Mel Gibson, who planned to direct and star in a remake. This remake, of course, never happened, given Jackson the opportunity to bring on Christian Rivers, the animation director of King Kong, to direct the sure-to-be blockbuster.
As much as I’d like to see Peter Jackson give us an entirely original generation-defining epic, the likes of which we could expect from a young Speilberg or Lucas (emphasis on ‘young’ in both cases), the quality of both LOTR and King Kong have to make you excited about anything Jackson’s name is attached to. It seems, however, that Jackson’s taste for films that aren’t remakes or adaptations of classic novels or video games is limited to smaller projects like “Heavenly Creatures” and “The Lovely Bones” (or camp-horror–like his earlier films).
[Via Playfuls.com]