Producers Jeff Sackman and Michael Baker have hired Denmark’s Rie Rasmussen to remake David Cronenberg’s classic first feature, itself the subject of a special screening at Toronto this year.
Sackman’s TAJJ Media and Baker’s Bunk 11 will produce while the film’s original executive producer André Link reprises his role.
Casting is underway in time for a February 2014 shoot. Ian Driscoll’s screenplay updates the original storyline about a parasite outbreak that turns apartment complex residents into sex fiends to incorporate the realities of the post-HIV digital world.
Cronenberg, the subject of the retrospective David Cronenberg: Evolution exhibition at Toronto, wrote and directed the original 1975 Shivers, which was known in some countries as They Came From Within.
“I’m Scandinavian and am very comfortable with sexual expression as a part of a healthy, modern-day reality, and I’ve always loved the underlying social messages in a well-made horror film,” said Rasmussen. “The opportunity to reinterpret this film from today’s point of view, adding my own female intuition and life experience was a temptation I couldn’t resist.”
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