Welcome back to the Weekly Dose of Ridiculous, in which you join us in shaking our heads disapprovingly at the most absurd news stories of the week, collected in one post for your convenience. This week we're dealing with a remake of 'Videodrome,' Todd Phillips replacing Martin Scorsese, and an over-abundance of 'American Horror Story' promos.

It seems Ehren Kruger has penned a script for a remake of David Cronenberg's body horror classic 'Videodrome.' His parents spelled his name "Ehren" on purpose, which is already worrisome enough, but here's what you should really worry about: Kruger is responsible for script work on the last two 'Transformers' films, the terrible werewolf film 'Blood and Chocolate,' 'The Skeleton Key,' and 'The Brothers Grimm.' Yes, all of that, and he's written a 'Videodrome' remake, which will be directed by award-winning commercial director Adam Berg and produced by Kruger himself. How do you make sure your terrible idea becomes a movie? Make enough money to finance it yourself! And it hasn't escaped our notice that the guy directing this thing is a noted director of television commercials. Did these guys only see clips of the film on one of those "100 Best Horror Movies" marathons or something? Clearly they missed the point.

'Videodrome' told the story of a television executive running a station that specializes in pornography and outrageous content, constantly trying to remain relevant to an easily distracted audience. The film meditated on our relationship with media and violence, and remains just as relevant today as it was in 1983. The most memorable scenes featured James Woods shoving a VHS tape in a vagina-like opening in his chest and shoving his head into the welcoming mouth of a television. But hey, if we replace the vagina opening with something that resembles an eyeball and replace the VHS with pirated movie torrents, then make someone like Zac Efron shove his head into the wall of an Apple store, it should carry the same meaning, right?

Todd Phillips
loading...

'The Gambler' has been in development for a while. Based on the 1974 film of the same name written by James Toback about a Harvard professor with a gambling addiction, the project was set up with Martin Scorsese to direct from a script by William Monahan, who penned Scorsese's 'The Departed.' And Leonardo DiCaprio was in talks to star, obviously. Toback based the film on his own experiences as well as Fyodor Dostoyevsky's short novel 'The Gambler.'

With all of that in mind, and when Scorsese can no longer commit to the project, who do you call? Someone like Steven Soderbergh, right? Oh, the fine folks at Paramount must have misplaced his number because they called career bro Todd Phillips instead. The only other viable explanation is that they were trying to get Phillips' hook-up for a kegerator but let him talk them into making a serious movie instead. Phillips is known for his frat-friendly comedies about regressive men with blackout drinking problems -- not exactly for his depth.

This is officially the worst thing to happen to Martin Scorsese's name since that time Three-6 Mafia won an Oscar before he did.


Now officially competing with 'Prometheus' for over-saturation in marketing is 'American Horror Story.' The show from 'Nip/Tuck' creator Ryan Murphy is entering its second season, and to prepare audiences for all the weird sex and deformed people and deformed sex people they've been running approximately 400 teasers a week -- all of them bizarre, enigmatic, and okay, kind of creepy little things that feature a super pale nun and 'Exorcist'-style spider-walking, and throwing buckets of meats on the ground in the forest... Hey, wait, that's mad wasteful. Park those meat buckets outside our office because we'll totally eat bucket food like a trained seal or someone who frequents KFC for those garbage disposal bowls.

Apparently FX has disposable income because Charlie Sheen is sober now and his list of demands has diminished accordingly, so there's no need to order a stripper fruit basket or a cocaine sculpture of a two dolphins "doin' it," as the network most likely anticipated when he was hired for 'Anger Management.' So now they have a surplus of cash, which they are using to make all of the teasers Ryan Murphy wants because Ryan Murphy has all of the ideas, and each and every one is perfect and beautiful because Ryan Murphy.

 

More From ScreenCrush