Mother Nature can make for a tempting villain – she’s implacable, distant and very, very dangerous. Her ferocious side was shown off in 1978’s Australian thriller Long Weekend, which saw a couple’s quiet camping weekend go scare-shaped when a pissed off natural world decides they’re a target.
Now director Jamie Blanks – he of Urban Legend and Valentine infamy – is planning a remake. And he’s just nabbed himself a star or two. "I've cast Jim Caviezel and Claudia Karvan, who was just in Daybreakers, the Spierig Bros. movie. She's perfect casting," Blanks told the ShockTillYouDrop.com website at this year’s Screamfest Awards.
And he’s planning to eschew the digital effects-heavy style of some of today’s chillers. "I'm going to stick very closely to the original film. We're going to do it all like we did back in the '70s - give it a bit of a retro feel. I don't want to re-invent it, I want to remake it, put my style on it. The couple in the film, their relationship isn't going to be so cut-and-dry as in the original film. There will be some complexities to that, but I'm going to go for the ambiguity the original had - maybe nature rose up, maybe it didn't. That'll all be in place."
He starts shooting in Southern Australia shortly.
