One of the most legendary (and notorious) filmmakers of all time is about to have his renaissance. Shout! Factory has bought the rights to 270 of Roger Corman’s films and a scifi TV show, meaning we could soon be getting reboots of classic films like Forbidden World, Galaxy of Terror, and Slumber Party Massacre. The new MST3K crew must be drooling right now.
In a press release, Shout! Factory’s team announced they, along with Chinese company Ace Films, have purchased the rights to 270 of Corman’s 360+ films he’d created over the span of his decades-long career, for an undisclosed sum. They plan to create new films and remakes based on the classic works from “The King of B-Movies” while others will be syndicated or licensed out. Does that mean we’ll get a new Humanoids from the Deep in the near future? Personally, this cult classics fan is excited because Shout! also owns the rights to Mystery Science Theatre 3000, meaning the chance of more Corman movies coming to the Satellite of Love seems very, very likely.
Corman’s work might seem like B-movie schlock upon first glance, and most of it is, but the man also pretty much created modern cinema as we know it. He gave dozens of iconic actors and directors their big breaks, including Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro, and James Cameron… who basically owes his entire career to Corman! Directors like Cameron and Steven Spielberg used Corman’s model and style to create the Hollywood blockbuster — albeit with much larger budgets, since Corman was the proto-Robert Rodriguez in terms of filmmaking on the cheap. For what it’s worth, he also made that infamous film, which ranks high on the “so bad it’s good” superhero flick scale.
We don’t know exactly which titles Shout! acquired, but I’m definitely hoping MST3K classics like It Conquered the World, Teenage Cave Man, and The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent are among them.