Filmmaker J.D. Dillard has been drawing a lot of attention since the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where his movie SLEIGHT made its premiere. A dramatic thriller that has been described as "IRON MAN meets THE PRESTIGE", SLEIGHT is scheduled to receive a theatrical release on April 28th. In the time between SLEIGHT's Sundance screening and the upcoming release, Dillard has set up and cast a supernatural noir called STRAY and is currently in pre-production on a Blumhouse horror project called SWEETHEART.
Now Dillard is in negotiations with Fox to direct a remake of the 1958 sci-fi horror classic THE FLY. He would also be writing the screenplay with his frequent collaborator Alex Theurer.
Directed by Kurt Neumann, the original version of THE FLY told the story of
a brilliant scientist who becomes obsessed with perfecting a device that can transmit matter from one location to another. Successful in his initial tests, he experiments with a human guinea pig – himself. But an ordinary housefly makes the journey with him, and when they merge both creatures have been extraordinarily changed. This is the chilling story of a man fighting to retain his humanity, and a desperate woman's attempt to save the man she loves.
THE FLY was followed by two sequels, RETURN OF THE FLY and CURSE OF THE FLY. The film was then remade in 1986 by director David Cronenberg. That take on the concept also received a sequel, THE FLY II. In the twenty-eight years since the release of THE FLY II, there have been some other FLY projects that didn't make it into production. At one point, THE FLY '86 co-star Geena Davis was going to star in and produce a sequel called FLIES. Twenty years or so after the first remake, Cronenberg expressed some interest in remaking THE FLY again.
Cronenberg didn't get a chance to return to the ideas of THE FLY, and now it looks like Dillard is the man to make another FLY remake happen. I'm interested in seeing how this turns out, as I'm all for more stories about people turning into flies.