Elijah Wood to star in remake of ‘Maniac’

Yes, you read that right, and it took me a couple glances myself to fully understand what I was writing. Woods has played a dark killer before (Sin City) but that will do little to compare to a full film primarily focused on this dark role.  Maniac is one of my all time favorite movies and normally you know my take on remakes. I am curious to see how this is developed as it is being categorized as an indie film, and I’m impressed by most things Alexandre Aja name is attached to.

Adding Elijah Wood just upped the potential for what this could be and may finally help Wood escape the world of Frodo (even though he is slated to play Frodo in the upcoming Hobbit film).

Maniac will be directed by Franck Khalfoun and will be produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur. It follows a “tale of a serial killer who works at a mannequin shop that finds and stalks his victims through social sites on the internet (still out there on Foursquare people?) then kills them while having hallucinations from his past, when he was abused by his mother.”

The film will start shooting later this year. Hopefully Wood will be able to completely capture the role while being involved in various other projects of a lighter note (Wilfred) at the same time. The appeal of the original film was due mostly to the gore that filled the screen as the killer scalped the victims and slept with the mannequins. It’s hard to see Wood doing any of that but my anticipation for a remake has never been greater. There were rumors back in 2009 when original talks first started about this film that Tom Sizemore would be contacted to play the lead, which would have also been good but not too much of a stretch. Seeing Frodo go postal sounds way more appealing to me, and I hope the film is enough of a success to get at least a limited theatrical release. More on this to come in the future.

Source: Deadline