"Red Dawn" On Indefinite Hold?

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"Red Dawn" On Indefinite Hold?

By our guest blogger, Matt Jussim

MGM's financial woes may have claimed another victim - the "Red Dawn" remake.

According to The Los Angeles Times, the Dan Bradley-directed $75 million remake of the '80s John Milius cult classic had been scheduled for a November 24 release this year, but with MGM's spiraling debts, the company has withdrawn the project from release as it simply doesn't have the funds to market and distribute films of this size.

Bradley’s film focuses on a group of teenagers looking to save their town from an invasion of Chinese and Russian soldiers.

When Disney dropped the Miramax label a few months ago, several completed (or nearly completed) projects became essentially stuck in limbo and still may not see the light of day. Now, it seems through quite different circumstances, the same thing will happen with MGM's upcoming slate.

Two high-profile projects in development – the new Bond film, and "The Hobbit" - are currently both going nowhere until the financial issues are resolved.

Sony picked up the Kevin James comedy "The Zookeeper" from the studio and will release that, and a similar arrangement could be worked out for "Dawn," but right now, there's apparently nothing in the works on that front.

I’m hoping that changes, because I was really looking forward to this film. The original was great, and I thought that Bradley’s film could have been made as a straight remake, but I also thought it would be good having Russia and China as the villain as well. There’s been some backlash on that front, and I wonder if the filmmakers would have been better served keeping the original Russian and Cuban villains instead.

Hopefully, something will happen, because with a cast of talent like Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the film has a shot to be pretty good.