Fatal Attraction was a landmark psychosexual thriller, a subgenre pioneered by Michael Douglas and consisting of dozens of movies framed around cocksure type-A males getting into questionable relationships with women possessing agency and sharp knives. Now Paramount wants to resurrect its sublimated fear of empowered women with its own small-screen reboot of Fatal Attraction, which would air in a series of one-hour episodes as an event series on Fox.
The original cast isn’t involved, but according to Deadline, the producers are preserving the storyline about a man entering into a poorly-chosen extramarital affair full of countertop-sex highs and rabbit-boiling lows. Event series are currently in vogue, but given that the original film ends with Glenn Close’s Alex Forrest taking a slug to the chest, a single season seems like the way to go. Of course, ratings are everything, so an anthology series of men ruining their marriages by way of torrid affairs with violent women could be a possibility.
Fox has commissioned the script, and has the right to turn down the project once it’s spent some time with it.But anybody who’s seen Fatal Attraction knows that spurning Alex Forrest is a bad idea.