It's never much of a surprise when it's announced that a foreign horror film is going to be receiving an English-language remake, but the news that WWE Studios has acquired the remake rights to the 2006 Norwegian slasher COLD PREY does seem slightly odd to me.
For one thing, it's strange that it has taken eleven years for these rights to be picked up. Hollywood studios are usually right on top of these things. For another, COLD PREY is a very simple slasher story about a group of snowboarding friends who get picked off by a homicidal maniac at a long-abandoned mountain lodge. The rights may allow WWE to work in some of the killer's back story from the sequel and prequel, but it's still pretty standard stuff. They could have done their own mountain lodge slasher without paying for remake rights. Of course, there is the name recognition factor.
The screenplay for the COLD PREY remake is being written by Casey La Scala, writer/director of the 2014 Christian horror film THE REMAINING. La Scala will be sticking to the story of
a group of friends who decide to ski out of bounds and are forced to take shelter when a storm hits, finding themselves imprisoned in an abandoned ski lodge along with a maniacal killer.
The focus will be on a strong female character who "reaches the limits of physical and mental endurance".
The Deadline report of this news mentions that the story is being described as "a cross between THE GREY and THE REVENANT". Wow. They're really trying to raise the prestige level on this one; I would describe COLD PREY as "FRIDAY THE 13TH in the snow" or "HALLOWEEN in the snow". In fact, COLD PREY II is basically a remake of HALLOWEEN II, with the killer rising from the dead in the morgue – much like Jason Voorhees in FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER or Michael Myers at the end of HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION – to continue his murder spree in the hospital.
Regardless of how they're selling it and how late this remake seems, I love slasher movies and have wanted to see more COLD PREY ever since watching COLD PREY III back in 2011, so I'll be watching this one for sure.