Most remakes are indefensible but the Jamie Lee Curtis ‘Murder, She Wrote’ movie might be the exception
Every week (give or take), there is an announcement of a new remake, reboot, prequel, or sequel.
Toy Story 5 is coming at us more than three decades after the first one was released. Gus Van Sant, an auteur director who should have known better, burdened us with a shot-for-shot Psycho remake in the 1990s, which, by the way, is just one of five movie spinoffs of Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, not including the five-season television series Bates Motel. Back in 2008, a remake of George Cukor’s classic 1939 dark comedy The Women was so bad that it nearly ruined Meg Ryan’s career. Why did they bother? No one knows.
There is not a single genre that is safe from the rapacious greed and lack of originality that have taken the film industry by storm. Most of us are just crossing our fingers that studio executives are too boring to show interest in our favourite titles. Imagine a Withnail & I remake starring Glen Powell and Miles Teller, or a Nancy Meyers English-language remake of Wong Kar-wai’s melancholy masterpiece In the Mood for Love. At this rate, we’re lucky Paul Feig hasn’t made a prequel to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona starring Sydney Sweeney and Blake Lively. It’s grim out there.
Only a handful of cinematic rehashes have actually worked, but there is one in the pipeline now that sounds remarkably promising – a Jamie Lee Curtis movie version of the beloved crime series Murder, She Wrote. It’s always treacherous territory to cast judgment (positive or otherwise) on a project that doesn’t even have a script yet, let alone a trailer, but there are a few reasons why this one does not seem destined to fail.
The original series ran from 1984 to 1996 and starred Angela Lansbury as Jessica Fletcher, a cosy middle-aged author of crime fiction from a sleepy coastal town in Maine who finds herself solving real-life mysteries on an alarmingly regular basis. She’s an updated version of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, though by 21st-century standards, Jessica seems so quaint and retro that she may as well be from the Victorian era.
The thing about Murder, She Wrote is that it isn’t exactly prestige television. It’s not The Sopranos, and it even makes Only Murders in the Building look highbrow. There is one memorable episode in which an uppity maître d‘ is murdered by a frozen fish that Jessica and her nephew and future niece-in-law later eat. Other episodes include witchcraft, a side quest to Russia where Jessica is framed for espionage, and a sailor with a peg leg looking for a priceless artefact from “the Orient”. There’s also an episode called The Petrified Florist, which is both unforgivable and absolutely brilliant.
The reason the series has enjoyed such a passionate fanbase across generations is because of its absurdity, not despite it. The shoulder pads here would make even Joan Crawford blush, and each episode is bookended by the paradoxical misfires of pages of exposition and gaping plot holes. Cabot Cove, Jessica’s seemingly sleepy hometown, is so riddled with murder and crime that it makes Twin Peaks look like Mayberry. Jessica has approximately seven million close friends who appear throughout the seasons and then disappear, never to be mentioned again, and the way she manages to balance global amateur sleuthing with a successful literary career is never explained. Put all of this together, and you have an unparalleled delight.
Remaking a series that is this beloved and singular is ballsy at best and possibly evil at worst, but the casting of Jamie Lee Curtis as Jessica suggests that it might end up being worthy of its source material. Over the years, Curtis has been the original Final Girl, thanks to her early work in the slasher genre, an action hero, a comedy star, and a no-nonsense middle-aged protagonist who cuts idiots down at the knees just when the audience is getting drowned in whimsy. That last contribution is most obvious in the 2023 ‘Best Picture’ Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All at Once, in which she plays an IRS agent who has little sympathy for tax evaders.
The Murder, She Wrote movie is being produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the directors behind the recent space bromance hit, Project Hail Mary, and their inclusion creates the ideal amount of tension. Lord and Miller have a tendency to be fantastical and sentimental to the point of mawkishness, whereas Curtis has the tendency to be deadpan and cynical. The combination could nail the unusual tone of the series, offering a version of Jessica who is much less cuddly and empathetic than Lansbury’s version but who still gets into outlandish stunts that border on the surreal.
Jason Moore, who helmed the first two Pitch Perfect movies, is set to direct, while Orange is the New Black and Dumb Money writing duo Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker have been tapped to write the script. That trio suggests irreverence, originality, and playfulness, all of which are suited to Curtis’s cutting wit. Add to that their ability to harness contemporary America, and you’ve got a recipe for success.
Last but not least, a movie is an ideal format for this project. If there is a quibble with the original Murder, She Wrote, it’s that the constant need for new storylines created repetition and an increasingly uneven level of quality. Making a movie with one mystery will give the writers plenty of time to hone the plot. Even if it succeeds and warrants a sequel or two, coming up with three or four solid storylines is much easier than coming up with more than 20 every year over 12 years.
It’s strange to find yourself rooting for a remake, but if they pull it off, this movie could be something special. Here’s hoping they don’t fuck it up.
