One Missed Call - More Asian Remake Madness!

[Scott W. Davis]

When I first reported on ONE MISSED CALL and announced that Takashi Miike may give up horror after that... nobody really cared. The argument was that if you look at most of Miike's films, they aren't really horror but they are so original and perverse in their own right they can't help but be included in the pantheon of cult cinema.

Well, ONE MISSED CALL was a huge hit overseas and on DVD everywhere else. And of course, if you read JohnShaft's story on Showtime's freak-out over Miike's MASTERS OF HORROR ep, you know 'ol Takashi has not retired from horror, has not slowed down, nor has he lost his edge.

Why is ONE MISSED CALL being brought up again? Can you say.... remake? Saw that one coming from a mile away didn't you?

Variety ran this story. Buuut, since none of us can seem to afford the steep subscription prices, this is what Fango's Michael Gingold had to say:

"Variety reports that Alcon Entertainment, Intermedia and Kadokawa Pictures will produce and Warner Bros. will release an English-language remake of ONE MISSED CALL, Takashi Miike's 2003 chiller. The original was Miike's entry in the post-RINGU cycle of supernatural films, in which a group of young friends receive mysterious calls on their cell phones which presage their own deaths. The story centers on one girl who gets the fateful message and must figure out how to cheat death within three days. The original is out on U.S. DVD from Media Blasters, which releases the Miike-less sequel ONE MISSED CALL 2 in a two-disc set May 16.

The director of the U.S. version is French filmmaker Eric Valette, an ironic choice, given that his own debut chiller MALEFIQUE is also slated for a redux (by Paramount and producer Neal Moritz, with John Pogue scripting) while the original still has yet to land an American distributor. The scripter of the new CALL is thriller novelist Andrew Klavan, whose books WHITE OF THE EYE (written as Margaret Tracy), DON'T SAY A WORD and TRUE CRIME have been adapted as features, and who penned the 1990 dark comedy A SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM, starring Michael Caine."

Since THE RING was such a hot remake in the States, Asian remakes are hot. Thing is, many of the Asian horror films took their cue from RINGU. Hence, when ONE MISSED CALL finally comes out, long after the remake of PULSE hits, it will be interesting to see if audiences are still willing to bite.