Steven Spielberg to Unnecessarily Remake ‘Harvey’

Here’s how bad things are getting in Hollywood. Even the biggest director in town is doing unnecessary remakes.

Steven Spielberg, the multiple Oscar winning director of films such as “Jurassic Park,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Schindler’s List,” has chosen his next film. He will remake the 1950 classic “Harvey,” which starred Jimmy Stewart.

“Harvey” is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning play by Mary Chase about a man who befriends an invisible 6 foot tall rabbit. No one has been cast yet but, according to Variety, Spielberg will reach out to the biggest names in Hollywood – including Tom Hanks and Will Smith – to see if any of them can fit the movie in the already busy schedules. He hopes to shoot early 2010.

For film fans, this movie almost came out of nowhere. Spielberg just finished directing “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn,” but that movie has so many computer graphics, it won’t be released until 2011. In the meantime, everyone had thought Spielberg would either do “Lincoln,” about our 16th President and starring Liam Neeson, “The 39 Clues,” a children’s book adaptation, or “Matt Helm,” a spy movie.

But instead, Spielberg will revisit “Harvey.” At least the film is almost 60 years old and the play is even older, so many generations aren’t familiar with it. However, you really wish that someone with such an acute appreciation of film history, like Spielberg, would just champion people watching the original and himself do something new.

That’s just the state of the movie, biz, though. Remakes are safer.