I don’t want to speak too soon, but I think Tim Burton is making interesting choices again?? The filmmaker is rekindling his love of sci-fi and B-movies with a remake of Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman—and he’s enlisted a surprising collaborator.
Per Variety, Burton is set to direct a remake of the 1958 cult classic for Warner Bros., with Gone Girl author and screenwriter Gillian Flynn handling the screenplay. The original Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman follows Nancy (Allison Hayes), a socialite who is transformed into a giantess by an alien and decides to get revenge on her cheating husband. There’s a little more to it than the campy plot and aesthetic, which is where Flynn’s skills come in: Pre-giant, Nancy is struggling with her mental health and self-medicating with alcohol, both of which are only made worse by her husband, who isn’t just a cheater—he’s also abusive. All of which is right in Flynn’s wheelhouse.
Burton famously loves B-movies and classic sci-fi, sandboxes he’s played in before with Ed Wood and the somewhat underrated Mars Attacks. We know he can nail the aesthetic, but is Burton ready to make interesting movies again? Hopefully he finished exorcising his studio demons with the live-action Dumbo remake, which seemed to have ended his on-again/off-again relationship with Disney for good.
Just this week, Warner Bros. revealed the first official poster for Burton’s Beetlejuice sequel—a movie that’s had me cautiously optimistic for some time now—along with a fun new title: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Also this week, the Warner-owned HBO picked up a limited series adaptation of Flynn’s second novel, Dark Places, with the author on board as showrunner and writer.
Burton and Flynn are an unexpected pairing, but one that has me kind of excited. Between the Beetlejuice sequel and Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, it seems like Burton might be leaving his flop era behind. It’s unclear when the new remake might be released, but we’ll get a better read on where Burton’s at creatively when Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters in September.
(featured image: Stefano Guidi, Getty Images / Monogram Pictures)
