Rob Zombie has dropped his planned remake of the classic 50s film The Blob in favor of an original project, The Lords Of Salem.
Deadline has reported that the original project, in which the modern town of Salem, Massachusetts is visited by a 300-year old coven of witches, will be the rocker-turned-writer/director’s next film. He will write the screenplay while on tour this fall and plans on having the film in front of cameras in the spring. Of course, that was pretty much his plans last year at this time when it was announced he would be remaking The Blob, so who knows what will happen.
As for why he was dropping out of the announced Blob remake, Zombie blamed it on his experience with his remake of John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween–
I wanted to break away from anything related to preexisting material… The remake train is getting pretty tired now and when I made Halloween, everybody complained, either that it was too much like the original or too different. I like that people either love or hate what I do because it’s better than being in the middle, which means forgettable. But when you do an original premise, they take it on face value and after three years of not being able to win on Halloween, I just couldn’t go through that again.
Given that Zombie stated that it was his intention to “not to have a big red blobby thing” in his Blob remake, I can see where he would definitely come under fire from fans of the original. And speaking as a fan of the original, I can’t say that I’m disappointed by this news. Zombie may have had an interesting take, but it sounded too far afield to be honestly labeled a remake of The Blob. Perhaps he’ll develop it further into its own original project as some point in the future.
