It seems that I spend an inordinate amount of time reporting on planned remakes of classic films. It is therefore with great pleasure that I get to tell you about a remake project that has  been abandoned.

The planned redo of Rosemary’s Baby, from remake-centric studio Platinum Dunes, has been cancelled. As producer Brad Fueller tells Collider,”We even talked to the best writers in town and it feels like it might not be do-able. We couldn’t come up with something where it felt like it was relevant and we could add something to it other than what it was so we’re now not going to be doing that film.”

Fueller also indicated that their in development remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s eco-thriller The Birds, for which director Martin Campbell is currently working on a script, may also be canceled if a new story angle can’t be found for the material. “So that’s not a movie that we’re just going to step up and just go have birds attacking people and trying to throw that into the box office. If we can’t make that movie unique or add something to it, I don’t think we’re going to make it.”

Could this be the beginning of a new trend in Hollywood, moving away from trying to turn a buck through bastardizing a classic film and instead actually show some restraint when it comes to remaking films? As much I would like to think so, I am not holding my breath.

Michael Bay’s production company Platinum Dunes, already working on remakes of Friday The 13th, A Nightmare On Elm Street and The Birds, have added another horror classic to their list of cinematic retreads- Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

Shock Till You Drop is reporting that Platinum Dunes is in negotiations with Paramount Studios to redo the story of a young Manhattan couple (Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes in the original) who begin to suspect that their pregnancy might have some distinctly sinister overtones. The original 1968 film, directed by Polanski, was based on Ira Levin’s bestselling 1967 novel. According to the report, Platinum Dunes producers Brad Fuller and Andrew Form are looking for a screenwriter to handle the scripting chores.

It has been said that Hollywood wouldn’t know an original idea if it bit them on the ass, and I’m guessing that the folks over at Platinum Dunes have a lot of teeth marks on their rumps. I can understand the desire for studios to want to remake a foreign language film, though no matter how successful at the box office certain entries in the recent cycle of J-horror remakes are, their original incarnations have always struck me as the better films. But what is the desire that drives Hollywood to want to cannibalize itself in this way? Is it the allure of a classic film already having a certain name recognition factor with the audience? Is it hubris that makes them think they can do a better job than someone like Polanski or Hitchcock can? Do the studios just have contempt for audience thinking that they aren’t interested in older films? How about remaking some crappy horror films, if you think you could do better. Where are the remakes of Swamp Thing or even Manos: The Hands Of Fate?

So many studio brass seem to have come from a business background, rather than a production background which seems to have had the unfortunate side-effect of them viewing movies simply as product, with decisions made simply based on already proven factors of profitability and an aversion to risk taking. I doubt that those absconded in their back lot ivory towers know that their predecessors, the Warners, Thalbergs, Meyers and Laemmles, all were risk takers and it was those risks that built the industry from the ground up.