Are there any plans to remake ...
Queen of outer space: Jane Fonda
Question: Are there any plans to remake Barbarella or to make a big-screen Dr. Who movie? I think both would fare very well with today's renewed surge of sci-fi films.
Answer: Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure that Barbarella's (1968) cheese-and-tease formula is viable in today's feature-film market, although it might work on TV — I mean, what is Cleopatra 2525 if not a variation on that theme? Based on the naughty French comic series by Jean-Claude Forest, Barbarella chronicles the racy adventures of a scantily clad 41st-century adventuress (Jane Fonda) and her encounters with counterrevolutionary David Hemmings, killer dolls, blind alien angel John Phillip Law and nefarious S&M Black Queen Anita Pallenberg. Warner Bros. acquired remake rights in 1999 and Drew Barrymore expressed interested in playing super-swinging psychedelic sexpot Barbarella, but nothing seems to have come of it. The project isn't dead, and Barrymore's Flower Films is still attached, but there's really nothing more to say. However, the Clear Channel entertainment conglomerate has expressed interest in producing a stage musical of Barbarella, adapted from a production mounted at Vienna's Raimund Theater in 2004. It featured music by Dave Stewart of the '80s synth-pop group Eurythmics and book/lyrics by Rudi Klausnitzer; critics generally trashed the production but liked the songs. If the Clear Channel Barbarella gets the go-ahead, it will open in — where else? — Las Vegas. Prospects look even dimmer for a new Dr. Who movie — there were two in the '60s, starring Peter Cushing as the Time Lord: Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966). A Dr. Who feature has been in development by Mutual Film Company and BBC Films since 1999, and back at the beginning director Paul W.S. Anderson (the Alien vs. Predator one, not the Boogie Nights Paul Anderson) was involved, but now the only name attached is producer Gary Levinsohn. I have a feeling that the less-than-stellar box-office performance of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005) bodes badly for Dr. Who, because its appeal is more rooted in its offbeat tone than in gadgetry and muscular outer-space action.
For more about Dr. Who, visit my friend The Televisionary.
