'The Road' Co-Star In the Running for 'Let Me In'

We haven't seen Kodi Smit-McPhee in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road just yet, but the young actor may have just landed another coveted role. According to Screenrant, Smit-McPhee is the odds-on choice to play the male lead in the English language remake of Let the Right One In. We had the Swedish film in our top five last year, and it instantly jumped to the front of the line for current movies Americans would never see because them's words on the screen but might watch if it came from Hollywood instead. Cloverfield director Matt Reeves is writing and directing the new version, called Let Me In, which is a more literal translation of the original book title, or so I hear. In the original, Kåre Hedebrant played the role of Oskar, a outcast at school whose life is forever changed by the young vampire next door, Eli. Both Hedebrant and Lini Leandersson were fantastic in Let the Right One In, so Smit-McPhee and whatever lucky pre-teen actress gets the role of Eli have their work cut out for them. More troubling to me than the studios grabbing a movie from another country and reconfiguring it for domestic audiences (it's happened for decades, and in a lot of cases, the remake stands on its own pretty well) is how certain plot points will be handled. Hopefully, they won't touch the love story, because that would cut off the movie at the knees. But you never can be too sure when stockholders are involved.