Kurt Russell hopes the Big Trouble In Little China remake is for “the right reasons”

Kurt Russell is currently making the rounds to promote his new movie Bone Tomahawk, but the inept shadow of Jack Burton still follows the actor. In a recent interview, Collider couldn’t help asking Russell what his thoughts were on Dwayne Johnson’s plan to remake Big Trouble In Little China: “I guess it’s that time now,” Russell said. “You know, nothing sacred, why not? I always look at these movies when I see a remake and it’s like, ‘Okay…there’s gotta be a reason.”

Russell is aware of the irony of the situation, considering he and Big Trouble director John Carpenter—who’s similarly ambivalent about the Big Trouble remake— remade Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World as The Thing in 1982, which in itself became a classic horror film. “John didn’t want to remake the original movie, he wanted to remake Who Goes There? (John W. Campbell’s science fiction novella that the 1951 one film was based on). He wanted not to remake The Thing, he wanted to do a movie of Who Goes There?, which had never been made, which was the short story. So ours is in fact quite different than the original Thing.”

The Bone Tomahawk star doesn’t offer any comment on his Furious 7 co-star wanting Carpenter (and maybe even Russell) to return to the fold for a new Jack Burton adventure .and seems cautiously optimistic about the remake. “Big Trouble is definitely a cult film,” he says. “So I don’t know what their reasons are for remaking the movie, but I hope that they have the right reasons, and I hope that they do it well.”