Hollywood has a fine tradition of getting its big corporate claws stuck into perfectly decent, non-English speaking, horror films and remaking them almost verbatim for the anglosphere. Perfect examples are The Ring, The Grudge, One Missed Call, The Uninvited and on and on…
Now, Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment are lining up Spanish horror comedy Promoción fantasma (Ghost Graduation) for an English language remake.
Promoción fantasma comes with the outline “The story centers on a teacher with paranormal abilities who helps a group of ghosts confined to the high school where they died years earlier in a fire.”and was directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera. The film was only released in Spain in February 2012 and the deal with Overbrook Entertainment was inked recently. Could this quick turnaround be a sign of unexploited potential in the source material, or symptomatic of the increasing trend in Hollywood to simply replicate films with a proven track record for an English-speaking audience? Time will tell with this one, fiends…
