There were the predictable howls of despair when it was announced that beloved 1996 classic The Craft was getting a remake, which were tempered by the announcement that Honeymoon‘s Leigh Janiak would direct and co-write with Phil Graziadei.
Now, HitFix reports that the movie isn’t a remake at all. It’s actually a sequel.
“I wouldn’t say that we wouldn’t so much call it a remake as a ‘twenty years later,'” said producer Douglas Wick. “There will be callbacks to the original movie, so you will see there is a connection between what happened in the days of The Craft, and how these young women come across this magic many years later.”
Yep, it’ll be a new group of women, rather than following Sarah Bailey and her coven.
“Here are some young women who once again discover the power of magic, and we explore their emotional lives, their wants, their fears, their longings, as they become empowered,” Wick continued. “So you know, the same way you use a war movie to explore the psyche of men, you get to create a heightened world to explore the psyche of these women. And so that seemed like an opportunity that was ripe and a way to make a movie that would be very much about now. And of course, part of that was just finding a talent that felt like enough of a real talent that you’d really be interested in her interpretation of this kind of story now, and of course Leigh is exactly that.”
We are huge fans of Janiak’s debut Honeymoon (read our review here and interview with her here), so we’re much more interested in this than we would be if she wasn’t involved. When HitFix spoke to original director Andrew Fleming, he said he was supportive of the idea (“I’m like, hey, go for it,”), while star Rachel True (who played Rochelle in the original) wasn’t quite as unequivocal in her support.
“I’m kind of over remakes in general, but I also want to be supportive. If they think it’s a good idea, Sony, to remake it, then they should, and it’ll probably be awesome. But I just feel like, why not do another witch movie?”
Obviously, the more witch movies there are, the better, and we do see True’s point: wouldn’t it be cool to have Janiak and Graziadei working on a witch movie about teenage girls discovering their power/powers that wasn’t tied to The Craft? But we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt, and not only because a sequel means that there might be a slim, slim chance that Fairuza Balk will be involved in some way.
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