Composer Michael Giacchino’s giant killer ant remake, Them!, which we’d forgotten about, is said to be adding Glen Powell to the mix. Over three years ago, it was reported that composer Michael Giacchino, best known for his scores on Pixar’s Up, TV’s Lost and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, is set to direct a remake ... Glen Powell said to be joining the Them! remake we’d completely forgotten about
Composer Michael Giacchino’s giant killer ant remake, Them!, which we’d forgotten about, is said to be adding Glen Powell to the mix.
Over three years ago, it was reported that composer Michael Giacchino, best known for his scores on Pixar’s Up, TV’s Lost and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, is set to direct a remake of Them!. That’s the classic 1954 monster movie in which giant, irradiated killer ants emerge from the desert and terrorise the storm drains of Los Angeles.
To be honest, we completely forgot that Giacchino was going to remake Them! – which would make it his feature debut, having previously made the roughly 50-minute-long Werewolf By Night for Disney+ in 2022.
The project was jolted back into our memory boxes thanks to a new rumour, emanating from the scoop vault of DanielRPK and reaching us via Dread Central. It’s said that Glen Powell, previously of Top Gun: Maverick, Hit Man and The Running Man fame, is in talks to play a lead role in the remake. Whether he ends up taking the gig or not, it’s at least a reminder that the new Them! is still being quietly worked on at Warner Bros.
Directed by Gordon Douglas, Them! was a cut above most other nuclear monster films of its age. Its opening in the desert, with a kid screaming the film’s title in the middle of a sandstorm, is superbly atmospheric. Its final confrontation among the drainage systems of LA is exciting, and looks remarkably like the Marines’ exploration of a xenomorph next in Aliens.
Of his take on the giant ant epic, Giacchino previously said, “there’s always a movie in your mind that never leaves your head, for me, that’s Them! It wasn’t until much later in life until I learned what it was about – the nuclear age. It’s about the other, the unknown which one refuses or can’t understand. The current version of Them! is about immigration, and to tell a story about the subject through a lens of this insane science fiction monster movie.”
We’ll bring you more on this unusual project as it comes in.
