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Thursday
15Oct2009

Ridley Scott to Direct 'Red Riding' Miniseries Remake

DateThursday, October 15, 2009 at 5:02PM
Ridley Scott's eyes may well be bigger than his stomach. He's been consuming a lot of projects lately, from Robin Hood to Monopoly to the Alien prequel to Brave New World, and those are just the big-name projects he's directing (plus one announced for next year called The Kind One with Casey Affleck). So how in the world can he find room for anything else?

Apparently, Ridley was convinced that a remake of the UK miniseries Red Riding is only waaafer thin, because he's directing that, too, based on a new Steve Zaillian screenplay. They previously collaborated on American Gangster and Hannibal. Both guys will also chip in as producers, as well.

Columbia stepped up and bought the rights to adapt both the miniseries and the collection of novels by David Peace on which it is based. Red Riding will be distributed by IFC in the US this fall. It kind of goes without saying based on the breadth of the source material that a one-film treatment won't be an easy job. So is Scott planning to do three films, mirroring the UK version? Dunno. That would probably be the smart thing to do.

Variety breaks down the plot: "The miniseries is a study of power and police corruption framed around the investigation of the disappearance of several young girls." We've seen plenty of stuff like this before, but the BBC production is supposedly quite good, wowing film festival audiences at Telluride.

We talk remakes all the time here, almost daily, and I usually defend the immediate foreign language remakes because there are significant cultural changes there. With this...well, we watch and enjoy tons of British films. So why didn't Columbia just buy these - the way Fox did Taken - and make untold millions on the US release? Better yet, why doesn't IFC just look for a co-distributor that has the stones to put the films into thousands of theaters instead of tens?

AuthorColin Boyd | | in , | Print ArticlePrint Article | | Comment2 Comments |

Reader Comments (2)

Hiya. Just a small correction to your post title - the BBC had nothing whatsoever to do with Red Riding. It was broadcast over here on (independent) Channel 4: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/red-riding/episode-guide

Thursday, October 15, 2009 | Unregistered CommenterSensaes

Then that is my mistake. I thought Channel 4 was BBC4.

Thursday, October 15, 2009 | Registered CommenterColin Boyd

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