The Craft Reboot Is Coming Whether You Want It or Not

It is time to accept that no cultural artifacts are safe from Hollywood's endless obsession with reboots and remakes. In a world where intellectual property means a guaranteed audience and executives have dollar signs where their eyes should be, nothing is sacred, which means everything is profane. With that in mind, maybe witchy 90s artifact The Craft actually is perfectly primed for a reboot. Well girls, it seems like it's happening whether we want it or not.

Zoe Lister-Jones (the writer, director, and star of 2017 film Band Aid) will write and direct a reboot of the 1996 teen thriller, which followed four social outcasts empowering themselves -- and terrorizing their classmates -- through witchcraft. "Dreams. Coming. True," Lister-Jones wrote in an Instagram post confirming the news.

The original starred Rachel True, Neve Campbell, Fairuza Balk, and Robin Tunney as a coven of misfits at a Catholic high school who discover an untapped power when they come together in an orgy of angst and proto-Hot Topic looks. The film inspired a wave of witchy film and television: Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer all owe The Craft an enormous debt.

For decades, The Craft has been a cultural touchstone trotted out every Halloween to satiate our desire for grungy girl power, and while at first glance there's nothing wrong with wanting to update that mission for a new generation, The Craft is one of those rare films where specificity is part of its power.

We don't need to update The Craft: it still influences fashion, pop culture, and art as is, and so much of that is tied up in its 90s setting and the alternately powerful and hammy performances of its leading ladies (and let's not forget the off-brand Celine Dion who runs the magic shop and introduces the girls to magical deity Manon). How can any actress hope to deliver the line, "We are the weirdos, mister," with as much disdain as Fairuza Balk?

That being said...you already know I'll be there opening weekend.

RELATED | Two Witches from The Craft Reunited & We're Spellbound