Tim Burton is reportedly poised to direct a remake of the cult classic Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, which was originally released in 1958, the year of his birth. Like the original, the new film would be a Warner Bros. production.
According to an article in Deadline, Gillian Flynn, of Gone Girl, Dark Places, and Sharp Objects, will be writing the script for the remake. Don Fincher had earlier directed Gone Girl, an adaptation of Flynn’s novel, which earned an Oscar nomination for star Rosamund Pike.
The original Attack of the 50 Foot Woman was a low-budget production about a wealthy heiress, played by Allison Hayes, who grows to gargantuan proportions after an encounter with an alien. Released in 1958, when women were typically expected to follow traditional roles, the film can be seen as a prefigurement of the feminist movement that would shatter these stereotypes in the 1960s and 1970s. An earlier remake, Attack of the 50-Ft. Woman, starring Daryl Hannah and Daniel Baldwin, was released by HBO in 1993.
Burton is especially known for his work in the goth, horror, and fantasy genres. This would not be the first time he has reached into the vault and come up with a new take on sci-fi classics from the 1950s. His 1996 film Mars Attacks! was inspired by the Topps trading cards of that era. With a cast that included Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, Natalie Portman, Danny DeVito, and Michael J. Fox, that movie grossed more than $100 million worldwide. Several of Burton’s film projects never came to fruition, such as movies about Superman, The Addams Family, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.
Burton’s lifetime box-office gross has exceeded $4 billion with such iconic titles as Alice in Wonderland, The Planet of the Apes, Edward Scissorhands, Batman, Batman Returns, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and The Nightmare Before Christmas. His next release, scheduled for September 6, will be Beetlejuice Beetlejuice 2024 A.D., a sequel to his 1988 blockbuster for Warner Bros. Burton is also returning as a director and producer for Netflix’s Wednesday series.
Check out more of Edward’s articles/