Paramount to make WAR OF THE WORLDS!

Hey folks, Harry here... Paramount and the production company Cruise/Wagner are teaming up on the H.G. Wells property WAR OF THE WORLDS.

Now, I love the original George Pal version to death. Those Al Nozaki Ships just blew my mind as a child and today. Watching an I.B. Tech print of the original in 35mm is simply one of the greatest geek joys in life. I also feel that WAR OF THE WORLDS is Pal's towering achievement in filmmaking. However, unlike his TIME MACHINE, which I felt should never be remade, WAR OF THE WORLDS is one that I welcome a revisit to.

Why? Don't we have a column on this site that highlights the futility of remakes? Why would I be for a remake of WAR OF THE WORLDS?

Call me idealistic, but I believe that H.G. Wells' WAR OF THE WORLDS has never been made. The original was set around the turn of the century. Mankind on Earth didn't have jets or gas-powered vehicles. WAR OF THE WORLDS was pre-WWI. The idea of an invasion from another planet at that stage of human history would have been terrifying. Ya couldn't just hook up your APPLE to the dashboard of a stolen Alien fighter and upload a virus. Heck, you couldn't even try to drop Nukes on them.

I've also dreamed my whole life of seeing those Tripod War Machines... the Black Gas Clouds of death... The rays... All the horror of a vision of earthly nightmares visited upon a world on the verge of great scientific discoveries. A world still very large and isolated. A world that still depended heavily on Horse and Buggy and Steam Powered Trains.

Updating WAR OF THE WORLDS to the here and now would be futile... Suddenly you would have something of a slight variation of INDEPENDENCE DAY or MARS ATTACKS! or others of their type.

Now I know many of you have never read the original book by H.G. Wells... Click here to Cure That!!!

Still others of you have never listened to the classic Orson Welles Halloween Radio Broadcast that literally sent a nation into panic. Click here to Educate yourselves!!! OR Try This Link Too!!! OR Click here to read the text of the broadcast!!!

And here is a great history about it all: CLICK TO LEARN!!!

Lastly, if you want to watch a history on WAR OF THE WORLDS, then Click Here!

At this point, Cruise/Wagner and Paramount Pictures have no writers or directors attached to the project. I just hope that when they bring people on, it is to make the film that the readers of H.G. Wells' classic work of science fiction have been dreaming of for well over a 100 years and have never seen on the silver screen. And whatever they do, let's hope they don't fuck it up like DREAMWORKS did THE TIME MACHINE!!!!