Deadline Hollywood reports that Indie production company Vincent Pictures is undertaking a series of remakes, including Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix. I’m not an enormous fan of remakes, and in this case I think it’s a particularly daunting task. No one has adequately stepped into Frankenheimer’s shoes as being able to capture automotive footage in the beautiful, naturalistic way that is the hallmark of some of the great car chases (and races) in his work. Recent automotive films have relied on computer generated cars for the more harrowing action, which continue to look fake regardless of the budget behind it—Transformers, anyone?
I can understand the draw of remaking older films. The common sentiment is that younger viewers don’t watch old movies, which presents the opportunity to recreate a time-tested product and release it without as much of the risk. Racing geeks, however, are notoriously loyal fans to the older flicks, and continue to seek out catalog titles. The tops of the lists of greatest car flicks has remained remarkably steady over the past few decades. You don’t, for example, see The Fast and the Furious knocking LeMans off of the top of anyone’s favorites.
We’ve also had the fairly recent phenomenon of Stallone’s racing movie Winning Driven. Originally the film was supposed to, in the spirit of Grand Prix, take place in the Formula 1 circuit. Ultimately Bernie et al weren’t interested and the film was relegated to lesser series. I suspect that the same would be true today.
What do you think? Is Grand Prix remake-able? Should it be?
