It was announced this morning that the 1967 film Cemetery Under the Moon will be remade.  This marks the third film from Korea’s Golden Age of movies to see a remake in the works this year. The first of course is The Housemaid opening in theaters in less than a month. The second is Manchu whose earlier incarnations have been called Late Fall in English–the remake seems to be going just a Manchu for now. Regardless of name, it is currently in production. Now Cemetery Under the Moon is getting the remake treatment. Like the other two films listed in this post, Cemetery Under the Moon (sometimes called the Public Cemetery of Wolha) has already been remade once before.  In 1996, Nam Ki-nam gave us his take on the film. Director Nam has been involved in mostly comic children’s films since the late 80s (he is famous for directing the Young-Gu series of films starring Shim Hyeong-rae) and is still involved in that area making ‘Galgali’ movies with former members of Gag Concert–another one is due out this year.  But I am getting off track…

I was very excited when I read about the upcoming remake of the original which was directed by Kwon Cheol-hwi–under I got to the second paragraph.  Then a little bit of doubt eked its way into my joy.  Apparently, this remake will be 3D animation along the lines of Toy Story and Avatar… In fact, one of the three studios contracted for the project is the Seoul-based division of Pixar called Puppetar Studios.

I have to wonder why they would choose to remake Cememtary this way.  The entire film composed of CG seems entirely gratuitous–the story is too simple for this and I think it would, depending on the style of animation, either be overwhelmed by special effects (ala Avatar) or made too childish (ala Toy Story).  I guess I will remain cautiously optimistic and trust that the producers know what they are doing.