Michael Douglas was terrific, Richard Widmark was great, and Genevieve Bujold has been magnificent in anything she's ever done. All of them deserved Oscar nominations and did not get them. THEY SHOULD NOT REMAKE THIS MOVIE. If they do, it will bomb big time. There aren't any actors in their thirties (or sixties) with the talent and range that these three had back then for this type of drama. But I'll bet that Michael Douglas would be fine for the part of "Dr. George" that Richard Widmark played in the original. Douglas is now in his mid-sixties which Widmark, (who's just passed away at age 93) was at the time. In fact, I think Douglas is now about the same exact age. Widmark was about sixty-four when this thing came out in 1978.
Yet, if you cast actors who are the same age now as the original three were then, the two leads would seem much younger than Douglas and Bujold were then, so I would not recommend a remake on that score alone. People in their late twenties and early thirties were much more mature on every level than young people of the same age are today. And people who are now in their sixties (particularly celebrities who can afford to look younger as they get older) look like people used to look in their early thirties. So maybe Michael Douglas is still too young to play Dr. George as Widmark played him.
Still, I can't help wondering what a remake would be like if say the splendid Keira Knightley played Dr. Wheeler, Patrick Dempsey played Dr. Mark Bellows, and Douglas played Dr. George. I don't know who could be cast in the part that Rip Torn (who was so great playing villains) played in Coma, but no one could top Elizabeth Ashley in the role that was apparently a cross between Nurse Ratched and a Stepford spouse. Just a pipe dream.
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