Terry Matalas will direct a remake of the 1985 sci-fi Enemy Mine, which marooned a warring human and alien on an unoccupied planet.
It was a good year as far science fiction, 1985. There was Back To The Future of course, but also Weird Science, Explorers, Brazil and Enemy Mine. The latter film starred Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr, and was about a human space traveller (Quaid) who crash lands on a seemingly deserted planet along with a scaly alien (Gossett Jr, almost recognisable in his alien makeup). The twist is that the human and alien species are at war with each other, and the pair have to put their differences aside in order to survive.
Enemy Mine may not be quite as widely remembered as its 1985 contemporaries in the sci-fi genre, but its impact certainly lingered with those who saw it. Wolfgang Peterson directed the movie and Enemy Mine built up something of a cult following in the years after its release. Now it looks like 20th Century Studios are set to revive the title with a remake (per the The Hollywood Reporter), helmed by Terry Matalas, the showrunner behind the final season of Star Trek: Picard.
The original film suffered some pretty troubling production woes, with original director Richard Loncraine being fired during production. Peterson – who went on to enjoy a stellar Hollywood run in the 1990s with movies such as Air Force One, In The Line Of Fire and Outbreak, was drafted in to direct what was one of his first English language films in the US.
The film was subsequently reshot by Peterson, and while Enemy Mine then struggled to cover those spiralling costs on its release, it did earn some critical recognition over time for its themes regarding acceptance and tolerance although, (without going into spoiler territory) the ending always stuck in this writer’s mind as being a bit of a jarring tonal shift and we’re already finding ourself wondering how this new version might do things this time around.
We’ll be keeping an eye on how this one unfolds. Casting will be key here, given that the original film was largely a two-hander, so we’re curious to see which actors will be selected for the key roles once played by Quaid and Gossett Jr. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
