Not Quite Hollywood Director Helming Patrick Remake
Steve Barton
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Richard Franklin’s 1978 thriller Patrick caused quite a stir upon its release and has garnered one hell of a cult following in Australia and abroad. It only seems fitting that the director of the incredible documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story Of Ozploitation!, Mark Hartley, has been chosen to head up the remake.
Fangoria recently caught up with Hartley and the director dropped the following on them:
“After we finished NOT QUITE HOLLYWOOD, I had discussed this with PATRICK’s producer, Tony Ginnane, and we decided we’d take a crack at reinventing it,” Hartley tells Fango. “So Justin King and I wrote a treatment and Justin’s working on the script at the moment, and hopefully, as soon as MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED (their latest B-movie documentary) is finished, we’ll get right into it.”
“We’re sort of giving it a creepier, Gothic flavor, very much in a similar style to THE ORPHANAGE,” he continues. “There’s much more of a backstory for Dr. Roget, and Patrick has dream sequences and flashbacks where he’s out of the bed. We don’t want to turn Patrick into Freddy Kreuger; we like to think of it as a love story with a body count. The great thing about the original was the fact that here’s a guy with unlimited powers, but all he wants to do is use them to manipulate the events in that nurse’s life to make her fall in love with him. So we’ve kept that central premise and really upped the ante.”
“The first PATRICK, as much as it’s a really interesting film, is very much of its time. It’s predominantly set in one hospital room, and we’re trying to open it up. To be honest—and I’ve said this to Tony — it’s not that scary when you watch it now, and we’re all about giving it those jolts. Obviously, I’m a fan of PATRICK, and I want people who’ve seen the original to appreciate the remake, so we’re certainly putting nods to the first one throughout the film, but we’re not doing a Gus Van Sant PSYCHO.”
Sounds like Patrick is in good hands. Check out the trailer for the original below.
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