A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : REMAKE CITY : Hollywood Owes a Lot to Its Past (Here’s Hoping It Pays Off)

Although Hollywood has always cranked out remakes of old movies--”A Star Is Born,” “King Kong” and “The Postman Always Rings Twice,” to name a few--interest in remaking vintage films appears to be running at an all-time high. With the success of Martin Scorsese’s “Cape Fear,” a remake of the 1962 film that starred Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck, it should come as no surprise that filmmakers are considering more remakes of well-known movies.

Touchstone Pictures is about to release “Father of the Bride”--a remake of the 1950 film that starred Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor--with Steve Martin and Diane Keaton. And as though the “Cape Fear” remake wasn’t enough for stars Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange, they’re currently working on another with director Irwin Winkler--Fox’s “Night and the City,” a noir thriller originally made in 1950.

A few of the classic projects in studio development hoppers: “Meet John Doe,” “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” “Death Takes a Holiday,” “Village of the Damned,” “Day of the Triffids,” “An Affair to Remember,” “Now Voyager,” “A Face in the Crowd,” “Born Yesterday,” “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” and “Gaslight.”

Could it be that filmmakers, having fallen on lean times with original projects of late, are suddenly remembering that everything old is new again? Producer Paul Schiff (“Young Guns”), who’s developing “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” at Fox, thinks that has a lot to do with it.

“It’s become very hard to come up with compelling, original, well-crafted stories,” he admits. “A lot of these old films have very good stories, and they’re a great place to start when looking for a new project.”

Gene Kirkwood (“Rocky”), who will produce the remake of “A Face in the Crowd” at Warner Bros., agrees: “When you look at the writing that’s around today, most of which is not very good, it makes you want to go back to the old films. In those days, they really knew how to write.”

With that in mind, Kirkwood recruited the screenwriter of the original film--Budd Schulberg--to write the script for the remake, which will star Richard Gere. The 1957 original was directed by Elia Kazan and starred Andy Griffith as a backwoods hobo who is turned into a successful TV star.

While Kirkwood insists that the time is right for the remake, he admits that there are a few obstacles. “The hardest thing is getting a director,” he says. “Nobody wants to follow in the footsteps of and be compared to Kazan.”

Michael Preger, who is producing Universal’s remake of “Village of the Damned,” a 1960 horror film about a group of children who begin controlling their parents, thinks there are other attractive elements about remakes.

“You’re entering the arena with a work that has done well originally, and you’re carrying a certain market awareness with it, which always tends to have immediate appeal out of the box,” he says. “If it’s a well-remembered work, then the audience goes into it with high expectations.”

But Touchstone Pictures President David Hoberman isn’t convinced that the fact a film is made from an old movie helps sell tickets.

“I don’t think ‘Cape Fear’ attracted customers because it was a remake,” says Hoberman, who insists that executives at Touchstone, unlike some at other studios, don’t sit around poring over old films and film reference books looking for ideas. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think too many people even knew it was a remake.”

As for “Father of the Bride,” Hoberman says: “It was not something we had ever really thought about doing. The idea was brought to us. We decided that the film had a classic structure and was such a good, warmhearted story about fathers and daughters that it would make a good movie.”

Of course, once the filmmakers have the original idea, there still is considerable work to be done.

“The last thing anyone wants to do is go back and remake the same exact story with the same exact characters,” Preger says. “You have to take it and update (it) to contemporary times so it will relate to the audience today as the earlier work related to the audience in its day.”

In updating “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” the 1947 film that starred Rex Harrison as the ghost of a sea captain who romances Gene Tierney, Schiff also has plans for updating. “We want to get away from the more gothic and melodramatic aspects of the original movie,” he says.

Preger, who’s also involved with the remake of the science fiction classic “The Day of the Triffids,” thinks that classic fantasy and science fiction films are ripe for remaking because of the advanced special effects now available to filmmakers.

“The technology of the ‘50s and ‘60s never really afforded any kind of realistic hope for good special effects,” he says. “The new special effects are offering filmmakers a new opportunity to go back and do many of the old classic science fiction films with very credible, believable special effects. In a lot of cases they might be better than the original films.”

Hoberman admits that no matter how good a remake is, it’s going to be compared to the original.

“It’s always done, especially by critics, but I can’t say I blame them,” he says. “If you’re going to remake a great, classic film, you better do a real good job or don’t bother.”