Hollywood: Land of the re-re-remake

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Is anyone doing anything original in Hollywood anymore? Apparently not. What’’s even worse, it used to largely be Pat Hobby-style hacks who took jobs doing retreads. Now it’s the top talent in town.

Just take a look at the news from today: The trades report that Darren Aronofsky has signed on with MGM to do a remake of ‘RoboCop,’ the Paul Verhoeven film that has already spawned two inferior sequels. The film is being written by David Self, who’s hot off scripting a remake of ‘The Wolfman’ for Universal.

Meanwhile, New Line has announced that it’s doing a second sequel in the ‘Harold & Kumar’ series. Always hilariously respectful, Variety noted that ‘storyline is being kept under wraps.’ Translated from Variety-ese, that really means no one has written a word--they’re just greenlighting the movie because the sequel made a lot of dough earlier this year.

Down in San Diego at Comic-Con, remake mania was also in full bloom. Robert Rodriguez was at one panel, talking about his upcoming remake of ‘Red Sonja,’ which he’ll produce with gal-pal Rose McGowan playing the lead role. Another panel was devoted to a new version of ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ which stars Keanu Reeves and is due this Christmas from Fox. The original was a landmark sci-fi film directed by Robert Wise, who got his start editing ‘Citizen Kane.’ The new version is directed by Scott Derrickson, who got his start directing ‘Hellraiser: Inferno.’

Who says Hollywood movies aren’t getting better all the time?

‘RoboCop’ photo from Orion Pictures