At this rate, before the decade is out we’ll have reboots and remakes of every single movie Alex Brown mentioned in their 2016 post “90s Nostalgia and the Death of Campy Teen Slasher Flicks.” We’ve got Idle Hands. We’ve got The Faculty. We’ve got reboot-slash-sequels of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. And now you can add Urban Legend to the list.
1998’s Urban Legend did, it must be said, have one hell of a cast. Playing the young, hot, doomed students at a New England college was a gaggle of stars that included My So-Called Life heartthrob Jared Leto; Dawson’s Creek star Joshua Jackson; future Lex Luthor Michael Rosenbaum; Noxzema-girl-turned-Dylan-McKay’s-doomed-girlfriend Rebecca Gayheart; former baby Alia (in David Lynch’s Dune) Alicia Witt; and Josie and the Pussycats drummer Tara Reid. But the adults were arguably even better; the movie also featured Robert Englund, Loretta Devine, and Brad Dourif.
The film’s plot is simple: somebody starts killing co-eds (and adults) in creative ways that connect to urban legends, like “Bloody Mary,” a murderer in a car’s backseat, and the purportedly deadly combo of Pop Rocks and soda.
The reboot, according to The Hollywood Reporter, “aims to be an examination of what an urban legend looks like in a post-digital world.” The new film does not yet have a director (Jamie Blanks directed the original), but Shanrah Wakefield is set to write the script, and Gary Dauberman (Until Dawn) will produce. THR notes that Neal Moritz, a producer on the original film, is also in negotiations to work on this one.
It’ll be interesting to see which up-and-coming young stars sign on to be creatively murdered this time around. No release window has been announced, but while you wait, you should definitely revisit the trailer for the original. What a time.