When a Cube remake was announced last year, the various people involved had me cautiously optimistic. Now that it’s on hold, I’m obviously reevaluating that.
The original Cube came from writer-director Vincenzo Natali, who these days is better known for directing TV shows with amazing visual style (Hannibal, Westworld). Cube had the fairly simple premise of a group of people waking up in a maze filled with cube-shaped rooms with traps in them. The visuals made the movie.
The remake was supposed to be called Cubed and had Jon Spaihts (Prometheus, Passengers) and Saman Kesh (Controller) working on it. Now, according the Spaihts, the whole thing is on hold. In an interview with Arrow in the Head, Spaihts said, “I have been involved with it. I think it’s resting right now as we look for a new creative direction, but we still are inspired by the vision of that original, independent, high-concept film. With any luck, we’ll still bring a new iteration of that story to light.”
On the one hand, a “new creative direction” does not sound like what they had was good. On the other, since creativity is Cube‘s bread and butter, they do have to get that right.
Spaihts also said that he honestly did not know if Kesh was still attached to direct the movie, which bodes ill – partially because it tells us exactly how on the back burner this project is and partially because Kesh’s involvement was one of the things that made us hope for this project. Oh, well. I guess this is another remake likely to disappoint.