While Tim Hill should never be forgiven for directing Muppets From Space, Garfield 2 or Alvin & The Chipmunks, he does write a lot of SpongeBob SquarePants and he did okay helming Hop. That last movie bouncing its way to box office success has helped him land another gig, with Deadline reporting that he’s signed up to direct the planned remake of Short Circuit for Dimension Films.
The film hasn’t shown many signed of life since late 2009, when Steve Carr (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) came aboard to direct from Dan Milano’s script. Now Tim Hill will supervise the writing of a new screenplay, although it isn’t known if a writer is attached yet.
It seems they’re starting from scratch on this Short Circuit remake, so it may be quite some time before we see this in theaters, although they are certainly moving in the right direction. The original Short Circuit is about on a military-produced robot dubbed Johnny 5 who develops human feelings after being struck by lightning.
Whether Johnny 5 really will come to life again is yet to be seen, but it appears Dimension Films is keen to get this up and running.