New Regency entertainment has signed up Irish director John Moore for its remake of the 1978 conspiracy sci-fi flick Capricorn One. Peter Buchman penned the screenplay, which updates the original’s premise – a mission to Mars is aborted and the astronauts spirited away to an undisclosed location to fake the mission and fool the public – to accommodate a contemporary setting.
The original film, which starred James Brolin and Elliot Gould, captured the Seventies zeitgeist: a nation crippled by fear, uncertainty and a lack of trust and faith in the government. Perfect material for our tumultuous times, you might think. It’s just a shame then that New Regency decided the best person to handle this is the chap responsible for the laughable The Omen remake.