In 2011 it was revealed that a script for a Flatliners remake was being developed, now we hear that there's a director behind the project and the name is an interesting one that suggests a different style than we might first have thought.

Behind the Flatliners remake there might just be some thought towards doing something more intelligent and something different than we saw with the original, rather than the usual remake track of simply updating the effects, putting in current big Hollywood names, and throwing it out perhaps in 3D. That doesn't seem the case here.

In 2011 the story was that a new version of Flatliners was being re-written by Ben Ripley, the writer of Source Code and before you get all excited about that credit do bear in mind he also wrote Species III, Species: The Awakening and the television film The Watch.

The 1990 film Flatliners, you might remember, was directed by none other than Joel Schumacher. It starred a dream team of Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt, all playing medical students who are curious to find out what is beyond death. One by one they medically kill themselves and the others bring them back, only to find that they don't come back quite the same way they went under.

I remember it being a great film with plenty of style, although I haven't seen it recently and it would be interesting to see it with a more modern viewpoint. I suspect though it will still hold up well although a remake wouldn't be the worst thing for it.

Bloody Disgusting through First Showing have the news that since Ben Ripley has been working on the script for a few years it's time to move the project forward and apparently the director Niels Arden Oplev has signed up for the film.

Niels Arden Oplev directed a number of Danish television series and a few films, the most notable being the original The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Filmstalker review) film and some episodes of the Millenium television series. He's since moved onto directing some episodes of the American television series Unforgettable, the pilot for the adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome and the upcoming thriller starring Colin Farrell, Noomi Rapace, Terrence Howard, Dominic Cooper and Isabelle Huppert, Dead Man Down.

Now the idea of the remake isn't sounding as straightforward as it might have at the beginning of the article as Oplev is an interesting director with some strong credits to his name that would really provide something interesting for a dark film about coming back from the brink of death.

There's not much more about the story so far but I'm already starting to get interested in the idea of a remake.