"Mothman" Director to Helm Remake of "The Orphanage"

By our guest blogger, Rob Stammitti

Two years ago, Juan Antonio Bayona's Spanish-language horror film "The Orphanage" was fresh out of the bag, released to critical acclaim and decent box-office receipts.  New Line Cinemas picked up the rights for a remake just after its release and now, after a couple years of stewing, the film finally has itself a director in Mark Pellington, probably best known for the 2002 thriller "The Mothman Prophecies."

The remake was in the works for a while before Pellington was brought on, with word from Slashfilm saying the original attached director, Larry Fessendon, had finished the whole script before leaving the project due to some sort of conflict with the studio. There's no word whether his script will end up being used for the final product.

Having not seen the original film, I can't really say I have too many strong feelings about this either way. Pellington has shown some immense talent for suspense in the past, both in his frighening but flawed "Mothman" and in "Arlington Road," a terrorism thriller starring Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. Guillermo del Toro, who produced the original film, also is acting as a producer here, and he apparently had a hand in the screenwriting process, so that may be a good sign of the direction the film will be going in--though I expect Del Toro is so caught up with the "Hobbit" films now that he won't really have time to provide much help on this one.

With a relatively solid director at the helm and Del Toro at least somewhat involved, this could be one of the rare horror remakes that at least comes close to the original.