Nearly thirty years after its original release, it has been announced by Warner Bros that ‘The Bodyguard’ is set for a 21st century reboot. The film, which gave birth to timeless classics such as ‘I will always love you’, ‘I have nothing’ and ‘I’m every woman’, has been adapted and performed as a musical on London’s West End for the past nine years but it’s finally getting a reboot on the big screen.
The remake of the film is set to be produced by the writer of the original film, Lawrence Kasdan, alongside Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich and will be written by Tony nominee, Matthew Lopez. Lopez is famed for his work in theatre and wrote recent Broadway hit, ‘The Inheritance’ which has made him hot property for television and film studios. He recently signed a deal with Amazon to produce and develop new projects for television and has been snapped up by Searchlight Studios to pen a big screen adaption of the novel, ‘Leading men’.
There is no casting news as of yet for ‘The Bodyguard’ but the rumour mill has been in overdrive with fans calling for the likes of Beyoncé, Tessa Thompson and Rihanna to portray Whitney Houston’s Rachel Marron, and one of Chris Hemsworth or Channing Tatum to play Kevin Costner’s Frank Farmer. During filming for the original, Houston provided Costner with singing lessons and he returned the favour by giving her acting lessons. It will be interesting to see if they go with a similar dynamic this time around or if they opt to go with two performers with both acting and singing experience.
The original follows Rachel Marron, a famous actress, who is receiving death threats from an obsessive stalker. As a result, bodyguard, Frank Farmer is hired to protect her and as the film progresses they fall in love with each other. We’ve seen in recent years how reboots haven’t followed the same plot points as their originals so it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a whole new story brought to life by the production team and writer, Matthew Lopez.
The original film is famed for its soundtrack, with two of its songs ‘run to you’ and ‘I have nothing’ both receiving Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song and the soundtrack on the whole winning three Grammy awards. Over the years the soundtrack has gone to become the best-selling soundtrack of all time, however the film itself has always suffered from mixed reviews. In spite of that, it still took over 400 million dollars at the box office and was the second highest grossing film of 1992, coming second to Disney’s ‘Aladdin’, so it’s clear to see why the appetite for a reboot is there.
It is unclear at the moment as to when the remake is slated for release, but with next year marking a decade since Whitney Houston’s untimely death, the film is sure to do everything it can to do justice to her unrivalled repertoire of songs.
