Mark Pellington Still Attached, And Getting Tired Of Waiting Around To Direct ‘The Orphanage’

Says Script For Remake Is Better Than The Original

For fans of the Spanish horror flick “The Orphanage” it’s kind of a good news/bad news thing. For starters, the English-language remake of the film is still not yet out of the gate but it still looks like it’s in the cards as director Mark Pellington, who became attached to the project over a year ago, is still on board and just waiting to get a “go” signal from Warner Bros. And he’s getting a little antsy.

Speaking with MTV News recently at the Sundance Film Festival, where he unveiled his latest pic, the middle-aged-men-have-a-midlife-crisis-and-getting-totally-fucked-up movie “I Melt With You,” he revealed that he’s good to go on the remake. “….That’s been a year in discussion. I’m ready to go whenever they can find an actress and pull the trigger….I’ve been attached for a year, and it’s actually because it’s been delaying, delaying, delaying that I decided to do this. I was like, ‘How long are you going to wait?'”

And while a year might be a long time to wait around to direct a remake, for Pellington, the script by Larry Fessenden (who was originally set to direct) and Guillermo del Toro, isn’t just good, it improves on the original. “I think the script’s better than original,” Pellington said. “I think the original is really good, but I didn’t have a big jones to do a remake of something. I love this script. I love this story. So that’s all I can interpret.”

It will be interesting to see how this one develops. In our interview with Fessenden last year, he said that production on the film halted because Warner Bros. “felt that they couldn’t cast the kind of A-List star they were looking for with my indie reputation.” We’re not sure Pellington is much of a step up in terms of getting a top shelf actress on board, particularly since reviews on his latest effort were not so enthusiastic. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.