Remake Madness

The last few years have been nothing but a slew of stinkers for Hollywood, with many claiming that the shameless remakes, sequels, gender and race swaps, and franchise rebrands, reek of a morally, and creatively bankrupt industry that is only committed to extracting more money from people, and cashing in their mediocre AI script writing.  Thankfully this looks like a break from that pattern.

In the continuing onslaught of remakes of old nostalgic movies, a surprise twist has come to the rebrand table.  The 2002 historic crime drama Gangs of New York is getting a fresh new look.  Set to start filming in 2025, the film is reportedly being race swapped and even getting a whole new location. 

According to studio executives, the movie was entirely too white in it’s cast and directing, and it’s time for a change.  Also the movie apparently was very out of touch with the current state of the country, Universal Studios’, April Martinez had more to say,

“It’s really surprising to me that people really haven’t been more vocal about changing this movie,” she said, “It’s so white and misogynistic and we really need to change that.” 

Preliminary reports about the script reveal the title to be Gangs of Aurora, CO, and Bill the Butcher has been recast as a Haitian immigrant leader named Barbecue and frankly I think the changes are a very appropriate and beautiful update to a cinema classic.  Hopefully this is the first of more culturally sensitive rebrands to come.