It’s not every day you run into someone who is all for one of their past projects being redone. Typically those creative individuals are happy with the results and get bummed out when anyone talks about trying to redo a thing they thought they did quite well the first time around. But when you run into someone like screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker, who has a particular project on his resume that he isn’t proud of, one that disappoints him and continues leaving a bad taste in his mouth to no end, then a remake provides a certain remedy. These are the instances when remakes can do good in the world, improving upon the mistakes of the past to surpass a lackluster movie.
That’s why you won’t find Andrew Kevin Walker getting behind any hypothetical remakes of SEVEN (or SE7EN, if you’re really going to make me do it), but the Nicolas Cage search for snuff film answers flick 8MM that he originally penned… he’s all for it.
In a recent chat to celebrate the 20th anniversary of SEVEN (damn, I feel old), Walker was pretty straight-forward about leaving that film alone and pivoting attention to the other film that could use the help.
Half-jokingly my reaction would be, why don’t we leave Seven alone and I think it’s time to go re-make 8MM, which I would love to do. But if they want to make Seven into a TV show, if they want to make Seven into a cartoon — there was a comic book exploring John Doe’s character, which I think is not an interesting exploration — you don’t have any control over it. You just have to go with the flow. But it’s been nice that it’s been this movie that has not be remade or sequelized or prequelized. That’s been terrific.
Walker has never had kind words to say about 8MM in the past, so this should come as no surprise. But I don’t really see a studio picking up the script for 8MM and seeing “Bank” written all over it right now, so he may may want to put his love into something else getting done. 8MM feels like a longshot.