You won't hear me denying the timelessness of Alexandre Dumas' adventure tale, The Three Musketeers . However, I'm fascinated that Hollywood feels the need to endlessly adapt the novel . And by "endlessly," I mean this movie's been made a lot . To name just a few, there's the 1993 version starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, and Chris O'Donnell. Raquel Welch and Richard Chamberlain starred in a 1973 adaptation, as did Lana Turner and Gene Kelly in 1948. And then there's 1998's The Man in the Iron Mask which is essentially a "sequel" featuring the aging musketeers. Now this new version, announced today, "will trace how swordsmen Athos, Porthos and Aramis first banded together." I've often wondered (especially recently with so many remakes in the works) why Hollywood insists on recycling old material over and over. Then I spotted this quote from producer Joe Gatt, who is behind this new Musketeers movie (along with the adaptations of Conan the Barbarian and Buck Rogers ), and who puts it rather bluntly: There aren't many branded properties like this out there, and it is a seller's market for the high-profile ones. You can either build one from scratch or find the ones that are available and of interest to audiences, which we did with Conan and Buck Rogers . In other words, "building from scratch" is hard. Redoing old stuff is easy. Is this strategy just lazy? Or do you think each generation deserves it's own Three Musketeers ...
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You won't hear me denying the timelessness of Alexandre Dumas' adventure tale, The Three Musketeers . However, I'm fascinated that Hollywood feels the need to endlessly adapt the novel . And by "endlessly," I mean this movie's been made a lot . To name just a few, there's the 1993 version starring Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, and Chris O'Donnell. Raquel Welch and Richard Chamberlain starred in a 1973 adaptation, as did Lana Turner and Gene Kelly in 1948. And then there's 1998's The Man in the Iron Mask which is essentially a "sequel" featuring the aging musketeers. Now this new version, announced today, "will trace how swordsmen Athos, Porthos and Aramis first banded together." I've often wondered (especially recently with so many remakes in the works) why Hollywood insists on recycling old material over and over. Then I spotted this quote from producer Joe Gatt, who is behind this new Musketeers movie (along with the adaptations of Conan the Barbarian and Buck Rogers ), and who puts it rather bluntly: There aren't many branded properties like this out there, and it is a seller's market for the high-profile ones. You can either build one from scratch or find the ones that are available and of interest to audiences, which we did with Conan and Buck Rogers . In other words, "building from scratch" is hard. Redoing old stuff is easy. Is this strategy just lazy? Or do you think each generation deserves it's own Three Musketeers ...