Things were looking good with David Gordon Green’s SUSPIRIA remake until earlier this year when he said the film was tied up in legal issues. He seemed negative on the prospects of it happening but was silent until a recent interview with IndieWire where he seems to have stuck a fork in the movie.
While discussing his latest project, PRINCE AVALANCHE, Green said the reasons why SUSPIRIA was stalled was not financial any more but more of a marketing issue:
“Nothing. It’s just not the right time for that movie to exist. It’s a classy, elegant horror movie and people want to see things that are a little more raw, like found footage. Nobody’s really begging for something that’s elegant, classy and expensive.”
Green doesn’t go so far as to say he is dropping the project all together, but that seems to be what is happening. SUSPIRIA regularly makes the top of lists of the best horror movies of all time, but Dario Argento‘s film is also a cinematic treat for non-horror fans. The visual style and the modernized approach telling Hitchcockian tales in a supernatural world made Argento a legend in Italy. While he certainly has a cult following around the world, a lackluster couple of decades has ruined his reputation.
We don’t seem to get high caliber studio horror films like ROSEMARY’S BABY, THE SHINING, or THE EXORCIST. SUSPIRIA had that potential. While I am not a proponent of remakes, I was interested in seeing what David Gordon Green would have brought. I am fine with going back and rewatching the original instead.