Going for a song from out of the movie vaults

Michael Dwyer on film

Anyone remember Martha Coolidge's engagingly offbeat 1983 romantic comedy Valley Girl, featuring a 19-year-old Nicolas Cage in his first leading role?

No? Well, expect a DVD reissue soon, now that the movie is set for a remake as a musical.

As Hollywood continues to plunder the vaults, Papillon, the 1973 drama starring Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman as convicts on a French penal colony, is scheduled to be remade on location in the Canary Islands in September next year.

Dundalk director John Moore is set to follow his remakes of The Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen with an updated treatment of the underrated, deeply paranoid 1978 thriller Capricorn One, in which Nasa fakes a mission to Mars.

Directed by Peter Hyams, it featured James Brolin, Sam Waterston and OJ Simpson (before he became notorious) as the astronauts. Quite pointlessly, MTV is developing a remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

And 10, the hit 1979 Blake Edwards sex comedy starring Julie Andrews, Dudley Moore and Bo Derek, is also set for the remake treatment. It should not be confused with Nine, the musical inspired by Federico Fellini's 8½, which starts shooting in October with Daniel Day-Lewis leading a cast that includes Sophia Loren, Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, Judi Dench, Kate Hudson and singer Fergie.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times