It's been a little over a year since Warner Bros. announced that J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5 creator, Changeling) would be penning the studio's Forbidden Planet remake, and for better or worse, the project finally seems to be moving forward. Straczynski is now working on a draft of the screenplay, which he notes will be faithful to the original while filling in more back story.

But the real news here is that Straczynski is providing for the possibility of a sequel. In the original piece over at SciFi Wire, the writer tosses in these worrisome phrases when asked about how the studio sees the remake: "big franchise" and "huge budget". Any remake of Forbidden Planet -- however ill-advised -- should, of course, have a large budget, but at least for me, this idea stinks of Peter Jackson's King Kong, i.e. let's take something classic and just blow it up to bloated, CGI proportions.

It's not so much a worry of tarnishing the good name of the source material. To his credit, Straczynski has the right background for the job and he points out that Forbidden Planet's roots in Shakespeare's The Tempest should help ground the remake in character relationships and not just huge explosions. His heart appears to be in the right place.



The question, as it often is with these remakes and reboots, is "Why?", especially when Forbidden Planet, like the original King Kong before it, was so revolutionary for its time and beloved for years after. The more I think on it, what's most troubling, though, is not the fact that someone will be remaking Forbidden Planet into a tentpole/spectacle/possible frenachise, but that the guiding principle is to remain "faithful" to the original while just expanding on back story.

I say if you're going to piss the diehard fans off and do this sort of thing (and let's face it, my generation will be the one to remake Casablanca or Only Angels Have Wings or The Searchers) then go out on a limb and truly make this new Forbidden Planet a totally different animal. Sure, it's not likely, but that name recognition should, in theory, grant Straczynski and Warner Bros. a certain degree of freedom. Whether or not they choose to exercise that right remains to be seen.