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Of all the remakes planned, Jumanji is particularly sickening

It's less than a year since Robin Williams' death

Christopher Hooton
Friday 07 August 2015 15:07 BST
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It’s obvious by now that Hollywood is taking a ‘screw it, might as well’ approach to the rebooting of classic movies and franchises, with dozens already in the cannister and dozens more in pre-production.

Very occasionally there is a legitimate motivation for updating a story beyond pure greed, but most of the time it only serves to slightly tarnish the original property and ruin your fondness for it.

Sony, which is having a truly awful year, is really ploughing forward with its sacrilegious commissioning, this week announcing that a remake of Jumanji will hit cinemas on Christmas Day 2016.

Do what you must to GhostbustersMen In Black… Hollywood, but Jumanji, really?

Not only is its classic kids movie status rooted in it being so 90s, but how is it possible to top the performance of Robin Williams, and isn’t it a bit tasteless in light of his death? Could the studio not, dare I say it, find a screenwriter to come up with an original adventure-based idea?

I’m sure people will go and see the Jumanji reboot out of curiosity, but right now there seem to be much more people on the ‘why is this happening?’ side of the fence...

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