I am so excited about the Tim Burton remake of Tim Burton‘s Frankenweenie! I’m so excited, I can’t stop using exclamation points! The feature-length flick is currently in production, and Entertainment Weekly has this exclusive sneak peek. In the stills, you can clearly see the two main characters—Victor, the boy, and his dog Sparky—and I’m just so dazzled. I love this aesthetic; nobody nails it like Burton. It’s a little twee, but it’s still adequately bizarre. Perfect.
While the original Frankenweenie hardly needs to be remade—it’s timeless, it stands on its own, et cetera—I love that Burton has retained the black-and-white, vintage horror feel of the original. And I think most people are totally down with a stop-motion animated remake, anyway. I don’t know, I’m just really relieved: this seems like an earnest project, rather than a shameless cash-grab. (Planet of the Apes? Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Some classics should never be reworked. Stop tinkering with them, Burton.)
For my own part, I totally grew up on Frankenweenie. I have no idea how it happened, but I went through a weird childhood phase where I only rented 1980s TV movies starring Shelley Duvall (Frankenweenie, Frog, Faerie Tale Theatre). Frankenweenie was a super formative movie for me, not only because it essentially ruined my sense of humor, but also because it’s about death and loss and grief, which are tricky subjects for kids. (Grown-ups, too.)
Anyway, look! Look how young Daniel Stern is!