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86-year-old Roger Corman is gearing up for a slate of remakes. The B-movie king tells the Hollywood Reporter that he’s making new versions of eight low-budget horror films based on stories by 19th century American writer Edgar Allan Poe that he adapted and directed in the 1950s and ’60s.
House of Usher will be followed by The Pit and the Pendulum, Premature Burial, Tales of Terror, The Raven, The Hunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia.
This time, Corman will produce but not direct the films, with the first to shoot in 2013, followed by two a year after that on budgets of $2 million to $2.5 million (the originals were shot for $250,000 to $350,000, not adjusting for inflation, on 15-day schedules).
The new productions will be self-financed by Corman’s New Horizons Productions, which will give the films at least a short domestic theatrical release and offer international rights at the American Film Market.
Corman says his biggest concern is replacing his legendary leading man Vincent Price, who died in 1993. Corman hopes to find a fiftysomething actor known from TV who, he says, can bring the same level of “sensitivity and neuroticism that Vincent was able to bring.”
