Remake cast ideas


This is one of those movies that, if casted correctly, can be remade successfully.

For the basketball team, I'd select random high school basketball players who have acted as well in their high school lives.

Coach Norman Dale - Liam Neeson (his height and presence gives him the look of former basketball player and intense coach)

Shooter - Ben Stiller or Jim Carey (each can switch from over-the-top to serious at the drop of a hat, something that Hopper did masterfully in the original)

Myra Fleener - Marisa Tomei (still strikingly beautiful with award-winning acting chops, I think she could breathe life and depth into this interesting character).



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Remakes suck! Why would you want to remake a near perfect movie? Or any movie for that matter?

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I don't think a remake would make any sense. The basic story has already been told, and if you go back and tell it again, it is either a complete rehash, or else everybody is screaming over the details you got "wrong."

There are, however, many possible ideas that could work for a sequel/spinoff.

Most wouldn't work now because all the original cast has aged out, but you could do a "life imitating art imitating life" movie set in the late 80s/early 90s, with some of the original players, now all in their fifties, meeting when the story of their legendary victory is made into a movie.

You could have Jimmy, now 55, coming back to be the coach at Hickory High (just as Myra feared) and being totally happy and satisfied to do it. Say he has had a very successful career in business and now wants to return to his college degree in education. He now has kids of his own and wants the nice small-town atmosphere for their high school years.

You could have the school facing closure or consolidation, which happened to many small-town high schools, and Jimmy leads them far into the tournament.

I would write the backstory that Jimmy went on from Hickory High to be a small college All-American at "Poole College," a tribute to Kent Poole from the original cast, and then played for several years in the NBA where he was a teammate and close friend of Crispus "Rolling" Boyle, the star of South Bend Central in the movie (based on the real-life Oscar Robertson of Indianapolis Crispus Attucks), who would go on to be an NBA All-Star.

At Hickory, Jimmy gets a call from old teammate Boyle, now a television announcer for NBA games and living in Indianapolis. His wife has just died and he is looking for a place for his teenage son. He saw the movie "The Huskers" and decided to track him down. Etc etc etc etc.

Bringing a black kid from Indianapolis to small-farm-town Hickory would create a bunch of new possibilities for drama. How does he adjust, how do the townspeople adjust, etc etc. You'd have to be careful not to make it total stereotype cliche, "racist farmers gang up on hip young black kid from the city," etc etc. Of course some townspeople would be racist, but not all or even most; you don't want to make the townspeople really unlikable so you wouldn't root for them.

And young Crispus III would have some character quirks too. He would have some resentments from all the expectation and pressure thrown on the son of an all-time NBA star so he wouldn't be the cliche perfect kid.

(You could even write the whole thing with their daughters, which might make it more believable for Hickory High to come all the way back and win the state championship all over again.)

None of the original Hoosiers players really went into acting on a permanent basis, but a few of them could do cameos as former players. Jimmy himself would have to be recast -- Maris Valainis can't carry a starring role, although he could do a cameo as the school principal or something -- two or three short scenes. With a new haircut, glasses, maybe a cheesy 80s mustache, etc etc, he wouldn't look like "Jimmy Chitwood."

Grown-up Jimmy -- or Jim -- Chitwood is actually a role I could see Kevin Bacon in. Although it's kind of similar to one of his early roles in "The Air Up There."

Chelcie Ross is still playing crabby-old-man roles; he could play a somewhat-mellowed George, now a senior citizen around Hickory.

Hackman is retired from acting so I would have Norman Dale as having died several years before (after moving on to a major college coaching job).

Barbara Hershey is 69 and still acting but I kinda doubt she would want to be cast as a 70-year-old who looks 70. She has also never been particularly enthusiastic about the role. Myra could probably be recast -- she could have a semi-cameo role.






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4) You ever seen Superman $#$# his pants? Case closed.

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Pretty good ideas Jay.

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The SJWs would get hold of this and cast somebody like Kate Blanchett or Kathy Bates as Norma Dale and still make Myra Fleener the love interest. The team would be comprised of Mexican farmers and Oriental straight A students.

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There's no reason to remake a near perfect movie of a true story set in the 1950s. Its story has already been told.

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There's no reason to remake it. It's even in color, for those who fear black-and-white.

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I think better than a remake-- make a sequel. Have the Hickory team match up against the Richmond team from Coach Carter. That would be worth seeing. It would be especially powerful in today's climate, since it pits an all-white small town team from the Midwest against a mostly-black inner-city team from the coast.

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