Donald Sutherland has blasted plans to remake the classic Nicolas Roeg horror film Don’t Look Now as a “shameful” money-making exercise.
Speaking to Metro ahead of the UK release of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, in which he stars as the villainous President Snow, the 80-year-old actor said the British auteur’s work was unsuited to being brought back to the big screen without due care and attention.
“Don’t embarrass yourselves by making it. Don’t embarrass yourselves by participating in it. It’s bullshit,” said Sutherland, who starred alongside Julie Christie in the 1972 film about a couple struggling to deal with the accidental death of their young daughter. “It was a piece of work indelibly written by Nicolas Roeg. It’s about a family. It’s about death; about having a child pre-decease you. It’s about love. It’s about extra-sensory perception.”
Added Sutherland: “Don’t bother doing that [remaking it]. Why do they do it? It’s just people wanting profit, trying to profit off the back of Nicolas Roeg, and something that’s very beautiful. It’s shameful. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
Roeg’s film, originally adapted from a short story by Daphne du Maurier and considered one of 1970s British horror’s most precious treasures, sees Sutherland (John Baxter) and Christie (his wife Laura) transplanted to Venice in the wake of their daughter’s death. Once there, they are warned by a clairvoyant that John faces great danger if he does not leave Italy. The restoration expert, who is in Venice for a job, then begins seeing what appear to be visions of his dead daughter around the city.
French company StudioCanal was reported in April to be setting up the remake of Don’t Look Now, which is being overseen by the producers of Liam Neeson thrillers Non-Stop and Unknown. No writer or director has yet been attached.
