The 1984 film Starman was an interesting pit stop in John Carpenter's career. The director best known for horrors or schlocky action flicks was at the helm of a fairly thoughtful sci-fi romance, and truthfully the film still holds up having just watched it recently. Regardless, Hollywood thinks it's time for a remake, and the unlikely choice of Shawn Levy has been made to direct it.
Levy, best known for the Night at the Museum movies and Real Steel, will direct the Starman remake based on a script by Arash Amel. Amel is the guy who wrote Nicole Kidman's embarrassingly failed drama, Grace of Monaco, so...there ya go. The original film starred Jeff Bridges as an extraterrestrial who comes to Earth and takes the form of a woman's dead husband, only to fall in love with her while being pursued by the government.
The '80s were full of high concept sci-fi flicks just like this, and Starman is one of the more memorable ones. But is Levy the right guy for it? On paper the answer is obviously "no", but he may surprise us. [THR]
