This doesn't happen too often. When it was first rumoured that 20th Century Fox was looking at doing a remake of The Fly, director David Cronenberg - who made the 1986 version - showed little sign that he wanted to be a part of it. That's nothing fresh, of course. There's not too much history of someone remaking their own film 20 years after they did it first time (with the key exceptions being the directors who have chosen to make American versions of their international hits).

And yet it's being reported this morning by The Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog that Cronenberg is on board to have another stab at his 1986 classic. The 1986 film was, of course, a remake itself (of the 1958 original), and it gave Jeff Goldblum arguably his most iconic role in film. Given the high regard in which it's held, it seems curious that Cronenberg would want to go back for another stab at it.

It seems, from reports however that the appeal of the project for Cronenberg is the chance to revisit the movie using effects and techniques that he wasn't, for obvious reasons, able to get his hands on in the 1980s.

There's no firm news on when the new Fly is going to move into production, and the RiskyBizness Blog also notes that Cronenberg is down to direct a big screen adaptation of Robert Ludlum's book The Matarese Circle. That's the project, you'd imagine, that's likely to take immediate precedence, so we might be waiting a while for The Fly yet.

RiskyBizness Blog