Sony is looking to update the 1990 Joel Schumacher thriller Flatliners, apparently undeterred by the disturbing death throes that have greeted other recent remakes who have tried bringing things back from the other side. It’s sort of like how, in the original Flatliners, Kiefer Sutherland continued to encourage his fellow medical students to keep up their experiments with near-death experiences, despite his repeatedly getting kicked in the face by a ghost kid—in this metaphor, the box-office returns of Conan The Barbarian and Fright Night representing, obviously, getting the shit kicked out of you by a ghost. Similarly unshaken, Sony has hired Source Code writer Ben Ripley to draft a “contemporary reimagining” of the story, which presumably means that the modern stand-in for William Baldwin ‘s playboy character will be haunted by all the women he sexted on Twitter or something. Hey, here’s another thing to consider: A Flatliners redux officially blazes a trail toward eventually remaking the movies of the 1990s, which is a whole new decade of resources to be strip-mined and reassembled that should keep the industry running for at least another five years or so.
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