A Tale Of Two Chuckys: MGM Announces CHILD’S PLAY Remake

So, here's something we didn't really see coming. 

About a week or so ago, Don Mancini formally announced that his version of a Child's Play TV series was on the way. As we wrote when reporting on that project:

Mancini's concept is an eight-hour Limited Series event, with Brad Dourif returning to voice Charles Lee Ray...Channel Zero's Nick Antosca [recently said] he said he was working on a TV project with Mancini. So, with this sort of backup, it's hard not to wonder if they were talking about the same thing.

The details on Mancini's return to the murderous plastic pipsqueak he's practically made an entire career out of are still sparse (What network is it going to be on? Is it a remake, reboot, or continuation of the existing, goofy mythos?), but for the devoted, it was great news: the Child's Play series is one of the most tonally diverse and bizarre of all existing horror franchises, and it was a safe bet Mancini wouldn't be continuing on with it unless he had an idea he totally loved.

Well, a second motivation may have reared its head today, as MGM just announced they're planning a big screen remake of Child's Play, with IT's David Katzenberg and Seth Grahame-Smith producing. MGM is apparently fast-tracking the production with Norwegian filmmaker Lars Klevberg (Polaroid) at the helm, looking to start shooting in Vancouver as early as this September. 

The script for this re-imagining comes from Tyler Burton Smith, who's written video games and Kung Fury 2 (blech). No word on whether the tone of this new iteration will be the same as the original's straight-ahead horror, or if the satirical bent of the later sequels will worm its way into Smith's narrative.

To be honest, this writer's about as confused as Chucky's son Glen. Tom Holland's first film is a total classic, and actually flew in the face of Mancini and John Lafia's original script after Holland performed his own rewrites. So, maybe this actually keeps with the tradition of the Child's Play franchise in a weird way. The sequels distanced themselves from Holland's picture, so having two dueling Chucky movies will be an odd moment of history repeating itself through a pair of new takes on the character: one refelcting the original creator's vision, while the other is a "remix" of those ideas, filtered through a new voice. 

Honestly, far worse things have occured in the genre's history. But seriously, if the remake doesn't also have Dourif voicing Charles Lee Ray, what are we even doing here? 

To be continued...