‘Jacob’s Ladder’ Writer Jeff Buhler Teases That the Remake’s Twist Isn’t the Same as the Original
Originally scheduled for release this month, LD Entertainment’s remake of Jacob’s Ladder was recently pushed back to an as-yet-unannounced date later this year, which came as no big surprise considering we had seen *zero* marketing for the film heading into 2019.
David M. Rosenthal directed the new take on Adrian Lyne’s 1990 classic, which was penned by Jeff Buhler (The Prodigy). Chatting with Rue Morgue, Buhler teases that the iconic twist from the original film has been tweaked for this year’s re-imagining, which aims to deliver a fresh new twist that we (hopefully) won’t see coming from a mile away.
“The concept is really about the experience of coming home [from war] and readjusting, which is very present and poignant in the original film,” Buhler told the site. “Tim Robbins is a soldier who’s readjusting to life, and feels like a stranger in his own city and to his family, so getting those concepts out there and really living in that space in our film was important. Then we came up with a cool twist that’s different from the one in the original, but has that same spirit: You’re following this story with these characters, and then all of a sudden everything gets flipped on its head, and you’re like, ‘Whoa! Things are different than I thought.’”
He added, “I would say this is more a reflection of the original film than a remake of it.”
Buhler wrote the film with Sarah Thorpe, centered on two brothers who have returned from the Middle East. Michael Ealy (Underworld: Awakening), Guy Burnet (“Ray Donovan”), Karla Souza (How to Get Away with Murder) and Nicole Beharie (“Sleepy Hollow”) star.
In the original film, “…a haunted Vietnam War veteran attempts to discover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusion, and perception of death.“
Mickey Liddell, Pete Shilaimon and Jennifer Monroe at LD Entertainment produced alongside Alison Rosenzweig and Michael Gaeta of Gaeta/Rosenzweig Films (Fright Night).
