by: S. Scott Stanikmas

Back in 1995 David Fincher made a huge splash directing the darkly genius Se7en and Andrew Kevin Walker became one of the most sought after screenwriters in Hollywood. It’s just too bad that his follow up effort 8MM was treated like a joke and pretty much left to whimper and die like the snuff film at the center of the mediocre mystery.

Walker has even talked about how let down he was by the film and how the experience soured him on the glitz and glamour of Tinseltown. In interviews he talked about how he cringed at some of the lines he heard in the trailers and that he couldn’t bear to watch the film and see a bastardized version of his vision on the big screen.

In an interview Uproxx conducted with Walker they asked about the inevitable possibility of a Se7en remake, but the screenwriter was more up for a re-envisioning of the Nic Cage / Joaquin Phoenix mystery-thriller:

Half-jokingly my reaction would be, why don’t we leave Se7en alone and I think it’s time to go re-make 8MM, which I would love to do. But if they want to make Seven into a TV show, if they want to make Seven into a cartoon — there was a comic book exploring John Doe’s character, which I think is not an interesting exploration — you don’t have any control over it. You just have to go with the flow. But it’s been nice that it’s been this movie that has not be remade or sequelized or prequelized. That’s been terrific.

There were some good moments in 8MM but as a big studio flick it never fully embraced its dark side. Sure Cage was warned repeatedly that he was getting in too deep, but it never had that sense of danger or air of trouble. I’d love to see a darker, meaner update that sticks closer to Walker’s original vision.

But it’s unlikely that we’ll get it, even with Hollywood’s hard-on for remakes and playing it safe with established material. So for now we just have to deal with a half-hearted effort brought to us by the guy who put nipples on the Bat-suit.