How many atrocious movies fizzle out and die before they ever reach an audience? We may never know, but there’s one stanky movie that just won’t die: The Room, written, directed, and produced by Tommy Wiseau, who also starred in the film. Quickly earning the reputation of worst movie ever made when it first came out in 2003, The Room tells the story of Johnny, a bank executive who finds out his fiancée, Lisa, is cheating on him with his best friend. The story is riddled with plot holes and continuity errors, the acting is terrible, and the whole movie feels like a revenge fantasy against some anonymous ex that Wiseau needed to work through.
And now Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul is starring in a remake. It’s Tommy Wiseau’s world, and we’re all living in it.
Slashfilm first reported on the new project on Wednesday, announcing that Odenkirk is starring at Johnny in the remake, which was filmed in January against a green screen. Podcaster Justin Decloux announced the project on Twitter, complete with a new version of The Room‘s classic “evil man” poster redone with Odenkirk’s face.
Odenkirk himself confirmed that the project is real.
Proceeds from the remake will go to an organization called amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research. According to Variety, Wiseau wasn’t contacted for licensing—nor did he even know of the project until the news broke on Wednesday.
Why is The Room such a phenomenon?
The Room is one of those rare projects that sails through bad back into good, and then right on into amazing. It’s amazingly bad. Like cosmically bad. In 2017, writer Tom Bissell—who coauthored The Disaster Artist, a memoir about the film by Wiseau’s costar Greg Sistero—said that The Room “is like a movie made by an alien who has never seen a movie, but has had movies thoroughly explained to him.” The film is filled with plot points that go nowhere, like Lisa’s mother having cancer or Lisa lying about being pregnant. The sex scenes are comically drawn out, and there are numerous establishing shots that don’t have anything to do with the scenes they precede. One character even gets replaced midway through—not just recast, but replaced by a completely different character—and no one seems to notice. This movie is such a mess.
And yet, it has a magnetic quality that keeps people coming back to it, over and over again. I myself attended multiple midnight screenings in Los Angeles, where Wiseau himself would tightrope walk on the theater’s second-story railing, and audience members would throw spoons at the screen. At its peak, The Room took on a Rocky Horror-esque atmosphere, complete with callbacks and inside jokes. It was a wild ride.
In 2017, The Disaster Artist was adapted to a film, with James Franco playing the part of Tommy. How much more media will The Room spawn? It’s hard to say, but at least Wiseau’s dream of becoming a famous filmmaker has come true.
(via Slashfilm, featured image: Chloe Productions)
