Light as a feather, stiff as a board: the 1996 cult classic The Craft wasn’t a big hit when it first came out, only grossing a mere $24 million on its initial release, but it’s remained a part of the pop culture consciousness for the last two decades. Andrew Fleming’s film was a lynchpin of mid-1990s girl power, with an impressive cast of young actresses who seemed perfectly at home in the counterculture. It was only a matter of time before some studio executive had the bright idea to exploit The Craft‘s darkness by announcing a remake. What we didn’t expect was that we’d be excited about it.
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Hollywood Reporter has reported (from Hollywood) that Sony Pictures is prepping to remake The Craft, and also that they appear to have found the perfect director. Leigh Janiak, whose debut feature Honeymoon is one of the more interesting first features of the last several years, will direct the updated version of The Craft, and she’s bringing her co-writer Phil Graziadei with her. Janiak is a promising young director whose first feature – about a young couple who begin feeling a unnatural divide after their nuptials, which may be routine romantic jitters or may be otherworldly in origin – also had a powerful undercurrent of alienation.
The original film starred Robin Tunney, Fairuza Balk, Neve Campbell and Rachel True as teen Wiccans who discover that together, as a coven, their magical powers are real. What begins as a tale of supernatural empowerment rapidly tears them apart, since power corrupts, and everyone loves a badass climactic girl fight with knives and magic spells. (Seriously, everyone loved it: it won the MTV Movie Award for Best Fight.)
Still, one has to wonder what form this remake of The Craft will take, since many horror remakes lately seem to struggle with the impact of new youth culture and advances in technology. The cell phone updates to Carrie added nothing to the film, and few teenagers have ever been less interesting than the ensemble cast of the failed A Nightmare on Elm Street reboot.
But if anyone has the chops, it may be Leigh Janiak. So watch out, because we may have a whole new group of weirdos to look up to by the time she’s finished.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and the host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
