Exclusive: Writer Jeff Buhler Talks Remakes of The Grudge, Jacob’s Ladder, and More on Pet Sematary

default-featured-image

We caught up last week with writer Jeff Buhler, who provided us with updates on his scripted remakes of The Grudge, Jacob’s Ladder, and director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Pet Sematary reboot for Paramount.

Buhler, who is known to genre audiences for scripting 2008’s Clive Barker-inspired Midnight Meat Train and writing and directing that year’s feature Insanitarium, said of the script he penned of the remake of the 1990 film Jacob’s Ladder for LD Entertainment with director James Foley attached to helm, “The script has been finished for some time.”

“Foley’s enthusiasm is very high, and he’s coming to this project with a lot of ideas,” he expounded.

“From what I understand, when he was up for this job, he basically told [executive producer] Mickey Lidell that if they hired a different director, he would murder them. That’s the level of enthusiasm we are talking about.”

As for casting, “They are going after A-list names at present, and I think that there will be casting news imminently. They are pushing really hard to make it a really solid project.”

Regarding Ghost House Pictures’ re-launch of The Grudge series, the new film will be produced by Sam Raimi along with Rob Tapert and Taka Ichise. Roy Lee, Doug Davison, Joe Drake, and Nathan Kahane executive produce.

Of the status of both films, Buhler stated, “Both projects are looking very promising for a 2015 start. These things change on a dime, but there’s a lot of momentum with both titles.”

Jacob's LadderBuhler then stated with a chuckle, “I’m ‘remake guy’.”

“It’s funny because I never really thought of this as either a career strategy or as an artistic strategy, but what’s emerging having worked on The Grudge, Jacob’s Ladder, and now just starting Pet Sematary is that my approach is to respect the original but to find something original and fresh within that world; allow the project to evolve a little bit; and update the characters to a place where it fits into a new world where we understand it, identify with it, and it’s effective,” he said.

“It’s not like you are erasing the originals from the pantheon of horror films [by making a remake],” continued Buhler. “I understand that [as fans] we all feel a sense of ownership of the movies that we love so when someone comes in and starts tinkering with that stuff, it feels like you are being violated, but I ask the fans of the genre to sit back and relax until the movies come out, and check them out, to see if there’s something new in there that inspires you and that brings a new experience to watching that story. I honestly feel that with all three of these projects we’ll bring something to fans that they weren’t expecting and that they’ll find exciting and that they won’t feel that the original films have been exploited in any way.”

“Look, I feel the same way, and when I get a phone call that’s, ‘Hey, we are doing this remake,’ my initial reaction is, ‘Oh shit, really?’ But if there’s a way to tell that story through some modern context in today’s world and I can find that thing that clicks in that way, then I know in my heart it’s going to be fine.”

For more on the Pet Sematary remake, see our previous interview with Buhler here.

Pet Sematary
VISIT THE EVILSHOP @ AMAZON!
Got news? Click here to submit it!
Subscribe to the Dread Central YouTube Channel!
Bury your pets in the comments section below.

Share: 

Categorized:

Sign up for The Harbinger a Dread Central Newsletter