Maybe a more accurate headline would be “Starman remake in the works despite — or perhaps because of — the existence of Midnight Special.” Either way, today’s news (which is definitely not a prank) that Night at the Museum director Shawn Levy is developing a remake of John Carpenter’s 1984 sci-fi classic is a bit baffling considering that Jeff Nichols already gave us the only updated riff on this concept that we’ll need for the foreseeable future. But that’s not going to stop this remake from happening.

As reported by THR, Levy is attached to direct a redo of the Carpenter classic, a sci-fi / romance / road trip movie starring Jeff Bridges as the titular alien who lands on earth and takes the form of a recently deceased man. He teams up with the man’s wife (Karen Allen), and the pair set off on a road trip to evade the government and get Starman to his rendezvous point, slowly falling in love with each other in the process.

Remove the romance and some of the more overt elements and you basically have Midnight Special, which centers on a father’s desperate road trip to deliver his extraordinary young son to a specific location at a specific time, all the while dodging the government authorities who wish to detain them.

Arash Amel, who scripted the Nicole Kidman drama Grace of Monaco (which was so underwhelming that it skipped theaters and went straight to Lifetime), is penning the screenplay for the Starman remake. Levy, meanwhile, is best known for the Night at the Museum series and comedies like Date Night and This Is Where I Leave You. His last sci-fi effort was Real Steel with Hugh Jackman, and was arguably one of his better films in recent years — so maybe sci-fi brings out the best in Levy even though this Starman remake news probably isn’t bringing out the best in you right now. Sorry.

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