Woe and wretchedness: The NeverEnding Story to be remade

The bad news blues just keeps hitting me this week. First I get wind of the sacrilegious Clue remake in the works and now I've learned that The Kennedy/Marshall Co. (who are responsible for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Leonardo DiCaprio's production company Appian Way are in discussions with Warner Bros. about overhauling The NeverEnding Story.

The Hollywood Reporter states that the new version of the classic film about a loner named Bastian Balthazar Bux who discovers a parallel world in a book and becomes caught up in an adventure to save a land called Fantasia will "examine more nuanced details of the book [the film is based on, Michael Ende's German language novel of the same name] that were glossed over in the first pic."

The Hollywood Reporter also notes that The NeverEnding Story, which hit theaters in 1984 and had two sequels, one in 1990 and one in 1996, arrived long before "the fantasy genre was seen as a springboard for a Hollywood blockbuster" (think Harry Potter's $4.5 billion haul for the first five films in the series) and so the sky seems the limit for the remake's profitability.

So while investors and production comapny CEOs hear "cha-ching!" all I hear is my childhood whimpering for mercy.

PS: If they even THINK about messing with the TOTALLY PERFECT IN EVERY WAY theme song, heads will REALLY roll:

-- NOAH MICHELSON

Previously > Remake Clue and someone's going to have to die