A third take on the Cape Fear story is happening, with a true crime focus to it. More on the TV project here.
It’s a relatively well known piece of film trivia that when it came to the 1991 remake of the film Cape Fear, it was a project that Steven Spielberg was originally developing to direct.
Around the same time, however, Martin Scorsese was planning to make a film based on Thomas Keneally’s book, Schindler’s Ark. The two would trade projects, Spielberg renaming the latter to Schindler’s List. He’d also remain a producer on Scorsese’s Cape Fear, but took his family-friendly name off the credits.
Now, there’s none of that. We’ve got Spielberg, we’ve got Scorsese, and they’re both executive producing a surprise TV take on the Cape Fear story.
Nick Antosca, of The Ant fame, is the one doing the hands-on executive producing and showrunning, and inevitably it’s John D MacDonald’s source novel The Executioners that’s providing the slightly different angle. Or at least the inspiration for it.
Read more: Celebrating The Simpsons’ Cape Fear parody
The new/latest Cape Fear will zero in on modern day true crime obsession, and put a married pair of attorneys in the midst of a storm, when a killer escapes from prison. Tits, we suspect, will go up.
According to Deadline, the idea for this came from Antosca, who’s a big fan of both the 1962 and 1991 movies. He approached Universal, and things have built from there. There’s now set to be chequebooks at the ready as competing companies bid for the show.
You’d think, given that a division of Universal has developed the show, that it’d get first dibs. Apparently, it doesn’t quite work that way.
It’s worth noting that this new Cape Fear is also the first TV collaboration between Spielberg and Scorsese, even though their film careers have overlapped.
More on the new Cape Fear as hear it. You can listen to the Film Stories podcast about the old one below these words…
