'Red Dawn' Redo Taps Writer, Director

(FROM THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER) – Writer Carl Ellsworth (Y: The Last Man, Red Eye) has been tapped to pen MGM's remake of the 1984 adventure drama Red Dawn, and Dan Bradley, a second unit director and/or stunt coordinator on The Bourne Ultimatum, Spider-Man 3, and the upcoming Quantum of Solace, will direct the update. The original movie, which starred Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, and C. Thomas Howell, was about a group of Colorado high school kids who take refuge in the mountains and launch an insurgency after a World War III invasion of America by the Soviets and Cubans. Similar to the way the original played off Cold War fears in the 1980s, Ellsworth says the remake will play off of current fears related to post-9/11 terrorism. ''As Red Dawn scared the heck out of people in 1984, we feel that the world is kind of already filled with a lot of paranoia and unease, so why not scare the hell out of people again?'' Ellsworth told THR. Red Dawn was the first movie released with the PG-13 rating because of its intense subject matter and violent content. At the time, the National Coalition on Television Violence condemned the film as the most violent movie ever made, saying it averaged 134 acts of violence an hour, or 2.23 a minute. (Hollywood Reporter)