The Blob remake: "along the lines of Alien and Predator"

In January, it was revealed that Con Air director Simon West had signed on to direct a remake of The Blob, the 1958 film which has already spawned a sequel (1972's Beware! The Blob) and a really underrated 1988 sequel.

As part of the latest remake's announcement, West was quoted as saying, "With modern CGI we can now fully realise the potential of The Blob."

This got us thinking: what is the potential West sees in The Blob? Would he use CGI to create, say, a massive, skyscraper-flattening monster - one that would have been difficult to convincingly achieve years ago? Or something else entirely?

West's currently promoting the UK release of his latest film, the thriller Wild Card starring Jason Statham. During our chat with the director about this latest Statham joint, we managed to squeeze in a question about The Blob and his ideas for it. Are we going to see a big, widescreen disaster movie version of The Blob, we wondered?

"Yeah, it's definitely going to be on a much bigger canvas than the originals, which were much more small, niche genre horror movies," West told us. "My version of The Blob's going to be more sci-fi."

West describes his film as being akin to two of the finest sci-fi films of the 1970s and 80s, too: Alien and Predator.

"The blob itself will be more sophisticated, more along the lines of Alien and Predator and things like that - much more science-based, the way Jurassic Park made you believe you could bring back dinosaurs with a bit of DNA from a mosquito. This will be much more explained on where the blob comes from and how it works. It'll be a much more sophisticated creature - because it is a monster movie rather than a horror in that sense."

The Blob remake will also have a change of scenario from the 1988 version, which saw its gelatinous monster arise from a Cold War experiment rather than the depths of space. The forthcoming iteration will, West says, be "more of an invasion movie."

"This thing's come from another planet, and also, we don't know how many there are. It's fun at the moment - while I'm prepping this other film, The Blob is a bit longer term. I'm having a lot of designing this creature, what its talents are, its attributes, how you can think you've defeated it, but you haven't. It's fun inventing a creature like that - like the new Alien or the new Predator."

So there you have it - a sci-fi version of Exclusive: director Simon West talks to us about reinventing The Blob - with a tip of the hat to Alien and Predator...
A version of The Blob that attempts to take its B-movie concept seriously, as Alien did in 1979.

We're guessing, then, that it won't have a 21st century rendition of this novelty hit at the start:

Wild Card, meanwhile, is out in UK cinemas on the 20th March, and it really is a lot of fun. We'll be bringing you our full Simon West interview very soon.