Back in March Screen Rant reported on yet another horror remake to be put into the works with Dreamworks’ Fright Night. At the time the producers had been put in place but no writer. Jump forward 8 months and a writer has been found in the form of Marti Noxon, who’s a regular writer on AMC’s classy Mad Men, as well as having worked on the hit vampire series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The original Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland (Child’s Play, The Langoliers) back in 1985, and was about a teenager (William Ragsdale) who discovers his new next door neighbor (Chris Sarandon) is a vampire. However, he’s the only one who knows it, as no one will believe him.

At the beginning of this year it was rumored that Sony was looking to do a remake of the 1985 movie, Fright Night, and I was hovering, waiting for the official news.  But alas, they couldn’t find a decent enough script and nothing came of it.

That’s all changed now that vampires are in vogue on the silver screen.  Everyone is turning everything into a vampire.  I’m just waiting for someone to turn Snow White into a vampire and call it an alternate origins movie.  (And we thought it was crazy last year?)

Well the Fright Night remake is in the works – DreamWorks that is.

This article was prompted by news that Sony is looking for writers to do a new version of the campy 1985 horror flick Fright Night, an idea that readers of Screen Rant might be surprised to hear I’m not against.

For the most part, I despise Hollywood’s habit of remaking past films. Sure sometimes it works (The Departed, Ocean’s 11, The Thomas Crown Affair, Scarface), but for the vast majority it doesn’t (Planet of the Apes, The Poseiden Adventure, The Pink Panther, Point of No Return, Sabrina, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, etc., etc., etc.), and is just a blatant and often creatively bankrupt attempt at cashing in on the name of some past, well-known movie.

So having said that, when is it okay to remake a film? If it’s done well, I don’t have a problem with remakes of original films that meet any of the following criteria: