The 1997 film Cube introduced the world to the horrors of six equal squares, joined together by the devil’s own geometry. And while it earned barely half a million at the box office from primitive, ’90s-era audiences who didn’t cotton to more than two dimensions, it eventually went on to find a following on home video, spawn both a sequel and prequel, and now, inevitably, a remake. The Lego Movie’s Roy Lee and Prometheus writer Jon Spaihts are joining forces on a new Cube for Lionsgate, bringing their respective experience with blocky things and tinkering with cult sci-fi to co-produce a Cube “reimagining” for novice director Saman Kesh. His will be called Cubed, taking the regular Cube and reimagining it as a past participle.
Kesh’s short, Controller, recently landed him a feature adaptation deal under Shawn Levy, and now it’s spurred Lionsgate to give him the keys to the Cube, where he’ll once again put seven strangers in a giant cube, then force them through various rooms filled with booby traps and even more lethal math. However, his remake will reportedly have a greater emphasis on artificial intelligence and “the birth of a new ‘digital’ race,” whose capacity for creating three-dimensional shapes makes them vastly superior to humans and their pathetic rectangles. The age of the rectangle is over; all hail the cube. Do not even think about gleaming it.