Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins passed away in 2020, but his most famous character is going to live on. Screen Daily reports that UK sales outfit One Eyed Films holds the rights to Mojica’s character Coffin Joe, and they’re teaming up with SpectreVision, the production company run by Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller, for an English-language reboot of the character. And that’s not the only Coffin Joe reboot they’re working on: One Eyed Films is also teaming with Mexican filmmakers Lex Ortega (Human Animals) and Adrian Garcia Bogliano (Here Comes the Devil) for a Spanish-language film that will “reimagine a Mexican history for the character”.
Coffin Joe, played by Mojica himself, was a very unpleasant undertaker on a quest to find the perfect woman to have his child. He took an awful approach to accomplishing this goal. Beyond the proper trilogy (At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse, and Embodiment of Evil – buy it HERE), Coffin Joe played a part in the films The Strange World of Coffin Joe, Awakening of the Beast, The Bloody Exorcism of Coffin Joe, The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures, and Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind. Mojica also hosted three TV shows as the character.
One Eyed Films says the SpectreVision reboot will offer “a more mainstream, accessible, updated version… faithful to Coffin Joe’s dedicated audience, yet presenting the character to wider, new audiences”.
Noah provided the following statement:
Coffin Joe is an iconic and indelible boogeyman who deserves to be reimagined for our contemporary culture. We look forward to creating a new feature which captures the dark artistry of Marins’ singular creation for our modern world.”
There’s no word on whether or not a screenwriter or director has been attached to the SpectreVision film. Meanwhile, Ortega and Bogliano are already working on the screenplay for the Mexico-based reboot.
One Eyed Films’ Betina Goldman said,
It makes sense to set the new stories both in the USA – where the Coffin Joe films captivated a whole generation of dedicated horror fans since the 1970s when the character ‘Ze do Caixao’ was baptised with his English name – and in Mexico, where this migration from the original Brazilian setting where cultural analogies can be drawn from the character’s original setting, yet creating a fresh approach with new possibilities for the character.”
I can’t say I like the idea of Coffin Joe being rebooted and played by someone else now that Mojica is gone and can’t provide any input. I do like that One Eyed Films and Arrow Films are working on restoring the original Coffin Joe films.