It was inevitable, but it’s being reported that Lionsgate is gearing up on a remake of the 1987 chick flick classic, Dirty Dancing. At the moment the news has only come from Production Weekly’s Twitter feed, but they’re normally pretty good at tweeting out reliable news first (for example they announced Rosario Dawson would appear in Unstoppable before anyone did today, via their Twitter feed).
Aparrently the script for the project is being put together by Julia Dahl (Uptown Girls), and will presumably once again follow a dance teacher who becomes romantically entangled with a young student at an upscale holiday camp, amid class and social disapproval – not least about the dirtiness of their dancing. However it’ll be interesting to see whether they keep the 50s setting or try to update things, and also whether this is a remake of the film, or if it’ll be based on the phenomenally successful stage musical
It’s not the first attempt to refresh Dirty Dancing, as in 2004 there was a sequel, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, although it was a bit of a cheat, as it was actually a completely separate true story, shoe-horned under the Dirty Dancing banner by the very brief presence of Patrick Swayze. It was also rubbish and made no money.
We’ve been waiting for this remake annoucement ever since production started on a screen version of the Footloose musical. With that now going ahead under the direction of Kenny Ortega (High School Musical), a new take on Dirty Dancing was almost inevitable. There’s no news yet, however, on when Lionsgate are hoping to get the movie on cinema screens.