5 Cult '80s Sci-Fi Movies That Hollywood Is Struggling To Remake

No matter what the internet might tell you, remakes aren't that bad. For every time a fan has demanded that the "original should be left as it is," there are dozens of stories that have been successfully upgraded and even remakes that have surpassed their predecessors. "Scarface," "The Thing," "The Fly," "The Departed," "I Am Legend," and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" are just some movies that have dared to take a story the world is familiar with and put a different spin on it. However, even with all that cinematic gold that has made smooth transitions into a newer iteration, other remakes have been stuck in development hell and show no signs of coming out.

Now, after rummaging through Hollywood's to-do pile, we've gathered five cult sci-fi classic movies that, for some reason or another, have failed to get the modern-day polish that studios have been desperate to apply. In some cases, the passing of the torch has led directors and screenwriters to be severely burned by a story they couldn't quite nail, or to accept that the original is simply a product of its time that can't be brought up to date. Nevertheless, here's a batch of films that could all show promise in the right hands, and maybe one day we might get a chance to see what that looks like. To start, we've got a John Carpenter classic that is being put through the remake machine once again. It's just a question of whether we'll see it come out the other end this time.

An "Escape from New York" remake is a lot like Snake Plissken. We thought it was dead, but according to The Hollywood Reporter, StudioCanal is giving it another go. Call us pessimists, but we can't help but feel we've been here before.

This bitterness dates back to 2007, when New Line Cinema won the rights in a bidding war for John Carpenter's cult classic starring Kurt Russell as the one-man army tasked with rescuing the president who was trapped in New York City, which in this future is now a prison island. Back then, the project got as far as casting a new Snake, with "300" star Gerard Butler being handed the role. From there, directors Len Wiseman and then Brett Ratner joined and left the project. In 2010, Breck Eisner, who had done an impressive job remaking George A. Romero's horror, "The Crazies," was considered to helm the movie until 2011, when it was canned altogether.

In 2015, 20th Century Fox acquired the rights, and, as usual, a collection of creatives was approached. First, Robert Rodriguez was announced to direct in 2017, but that fell through. Then, in 2019, Leigh Whannell ("Upgrade") tried to charm Snake before he followed the same path as his predecessors. Now, after "Ready or Not," the directors Radio Silence tried and failed to draft a sequel to the original; a remake is back in the cards, beginning the countdown all over again. Unfortunately, after this many tries, we'll just have to believe it when we see it.

After the first interplanetary buddy-cop movie, "Alien Nation," starring James Caan and Mandy Patinkin arrived in 1988, a television show ran for a single season in 1989 before being canceled. Shortly after, five television movies were made that unfortunately didn't gain as much popularity as the original. Nevertheless, Hollywood tried to tackle the universe again in 2015, when Fox announced that a remake was being written by Art Marcum and Matt Holloway. A year later, Jeff Nichols was confirmed to be writing and directing a new take on the original movie. From there, the "Alien Nation" reboot went through an immense series of flip-flops, with only one name tasked with bringing it to life.

In 2016, Jeff Nichols was reported to be signing on as director and penning a brand-new script for a film. After a relatively quiet seven years, it was confirmed that "Alien Nation" would have another shot at television, with Nichols' project instead being transformed into a ten-part series, hopefully following in the footsteps of so many classic film properties that had found new life on the small screen. That was until 2024, when it was confirmed that Paramount was sticking to the original plan and that a revisit to "Alien Nation" would indeed be a film rather than the previously planned television series. At this point, given how many tweaks and turns "Alien Nation" has taken, any prospect of a remake has aged like milk, which might go down for a Tencton, but that's about it.

While so dark and provocative that Russia won't show it, "Akira" is still arguably one of the most groundbreaking and influential anime movies ever made, which explains why there have been so many desperate jabs to retell the story in live action. The problem is that, in this endless journey to get Tetsuo back on screen in a different form, a consistent misstep keeps occurring.

A live-action remake of "Akira" has been toyed with and debated since the '90s, and in 2002, Warner Bros. had a go at cracking the code and getting the project off the ground. From there, a long list of directors have tussled with the colossal movie, including Stephen Norrington ("The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"), then the Hughes Brothers ("Menace II Society"), followed by Jaume Collet-Serra ("Kong: Skull Island"). Even directors like George Miller of "Mad Max: Fury Road" and Jordan Peele (whose film "Nope" paid homage to the original movie with a signature bike slide) were offered to helm the project. The last one attached was Taika Waititi, until 2025, when it was confirmed that he wasn't going ahead after all.

By this point, Warner Bros. had invested millions in a project it can't seem to grasp, and there's one glaring issue at the root. For every attempt that came close to production, one creative choice that numerous directors pushed back against was the westernization and whitewashing of characters. For a story so steeped in Japanese culture and history, that's a route an "Akira" movie should never take, and a glaring sign that a live-action movie doesn't need to happen.

"Flight of the Navigator" might've carried an "E.T." vibe to it, but the numerous runs to revisit the story suggest that Hollywood doesn't deem it quite as sacrilegious as revisiting the alien that loves an evening bike ride.

The first effort to remake the 1986 cult classic was in 2009, when Brad Copeland was tasked with writing a new script, and Colin Trevorrow was hired to handle it in 2012, which amounted to nothing. Then in 2017, the Navigator would come back on the radar, this time from a script penned by "Lucifer" scribe, Joe Henderson. The following year, Neill Blomkamp confirmed he was rebooting the film as one of the first projects under his studio, Oats Studio. Unfortunately, for four years the project lay dormant, suggesting that we were saying "see ya later, Navigator" once more.

The most recent attempt to get one of the coolest rides in science fiction back in the air comes from actor and director Bryce Dallas Howard, who signed on to give her own take on "Flight of the Navigator" in 2021 (via /Film). News broke that the star, who had cut her teeth behind the camera in "The Mandalorian" and "The Book of Boba Fett" by that point, would be giving the property a reboot, and this time having a young girl be the ship's navigator. The film was tagged as a Disney+ release, but since then, there has been absolutely no update on the project, suggesting that another Navigator has been lost in space once again.

"Threads" is perhaps one of the least-known entries on this list, and one we'd frankly prefer to leave where it is, simply because of how harrowing it was the first time around. Directed by Mick Jackson, "Threads" is a relentlessly bleak depiction of Britain after a nuclear attack, making dark post-apocalyptic futures like those in "I Am Legend" or "The Terminator" feel like far perkier worlds to inhabit.

It feels alarmingly fitting, then, that Warp Films — the studio behind Netflix's massively harrowing hit, "Adolescence" — is trying to find the thread and remake the bleak British drama (via BBC). Announced last year, the company's CCO, Emily Feller, released a statement saying that the new version will depict how "resilience and connection can offer hope even in the most challenging of times." It's this perspective, however, that should have fans of the original movie and its creator a tad concerned.

In an interview with Empire, Jackson confessed, "That one phrase worried me. Resilience of the human spirit is a concept from drama, a piece of entertainment, but hope is not part of nuclear war. Hope that it all turns out great in the end and that everybody's resilient? It's not true." It's this perspective that suggests that the most recent remake on this list might be struggling in its execution before it's even begun. For now, let's just hope that they get things right and show just how wrong things can get if the world goes boom.