Corona | Coming Attractions

After lengthy delays and the bankruptcy of its studio, we finally have the first trailer for the Red Dawn remake to look at. Fans of the original Red Dawn will find a lot of the story similar (and even the dialogue) but the faces of the heroes and the enemy have changed.

Let's take a look:

FilmDistrict has announced a November 2, 2012 release date for Red Dawn. We'll get the chance to see the remake nearly four years after it was filmed in early 2009.

FilmDistrict will release the remake of Red Dawn sometime in 2012, The Los Angeles Times has learned. An exact release date couldn't be learned by the paper, but the transfer of the movie's ownership from financially crippled MGM to FilmDistrict, is happening.

FilmDistrict is a new distribution company on the scene in America. They currently have the Ryan Gosling action-thriller Drive in theaters.

In a move that shows both the stunning weight of international business making and the power of computers in today's moviemaking process, MGM is digitally removing all visual references to the Chinese being the invading army in its Red Dawn remake. Instead, the occupying force will now come from North Korea.

The reason for the change? In the past few weeks the movie studio has begun showing Red Dawn to representatives for potential new distribution companies. MGM wants to sell off the release rights to the movie, to generate some badly needed cash, but there had been a cold reception to the film from viewers because it paints the Chinese in a poor light. The thinking is that there could be a potential blowback against the parent company that distributes Red Dawn from the Chinese government or Chinese-based business. That negative feeling could become a serious problem for a mega-conglomerate like Disney, who has theme parks based in China, or Sony Pictures who could stand to lose business selling its electronics to China's 1.3 billion consumers.

To circumnavigate the problem, MGM has begun digitally removing all Chinese flags and symbols from the movie, replacing them with North Korean imagery. Dialog is also being altered as well to match with the film's new invaders.

Insiders with access to the production told The Los Angeles Times that the changes should cost MGM only $1 million dollars to make. Tripp Vinson, one of Red Dawn's producers, told the paper, "We were initially very reluctant to make any changes, but after careful consideration we constructed a way to make a scarier, smarter and more dangerous Red Dawn that we believe improves the movie."

Hey, look! It's a leaked cast photo of the new Red Dawn group of Wolverines. Somehow this website got their mitts on the photo, which appears to be a test shot of the actors in costume.

(That tall guy near the center? He's Chris Hemsworth, a.k.a. the God of Thunder we'll be seeing in the Thor movie.)

Writing for The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein reports that MGM has indefinitely postponed the release of its Red Dawn remake because, as the writer puts it, "MGM has run out of money."

In recent months the makers of the next James Bond movie have had to put their production on hold due to the financial black hole that MGM finds itself in. Two weeks ago the two Hobbit movies in development at the studio suffered a major setback when director Guillermo del Toro exited the projects citing the uncertainty over the studio's future and filming the Lord of the Rings prequels.

Red Dawn has been scheduled for a November 2010 opening. It appears we must wait and see what happens to MGM before the movie will see the light of day.

A trio of photos from a neighborhood street in Mount Clemens, MI, that is being used for scenes have gone up at Ain't It Cool. In one photo it looks like fire hoses are directing water on a smoking house. Going on what's seen in the other two photos, perhaps the fire started from the airliner that crashed in the hood?

Watchmen's Jeffrey Dean Morgan has a role in the remake of Red Dawn playing the part that Powers Booth played in the original, a downed U.S. fighter pilot who is taken in by the Wolverines.

"I just love that f**king movie, ever since I was a kid," Morgan told Coming Soon about his new job. "It's a really good, young cast. I'll be the old guy in it, which is cool."

The rest of the Red Dawn remake's squad of Wolverines have been announced and they are Josh Hutcherson, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise and Edwin Hodge. Hutcherson will step into the sneakers of C. Thomas Howell's role as Robert, a tech geek; Lucas will be a cheerleader named Erica, the part originally played by Lea Thompson, but in a twist she's being held in an internment camp; Cruise will be Daryl, the son of the mayor of Spokane (originally played by Darren Dalton); and Hodge will play Danny, a popular football player in high school (the part originally played by Brad Savage.) The Red Dawn players are scheduled to take part in military training in a few weeks.

MGM has scheduled its remake of Red Dawn for September 24, 2010.

Screenwriter Tony Gilroy has been hired to perform a rewrite of Red Dawn reports the Latino Review website. Gilroy, the screenwriter of the Bourne trilogy of films as well as the writer/director of Michael Clayton, has already turned in his draft, dated June 1 and running at 107 pages.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Josh Peck (The Wackness) and Adrianne Palicki (Friday Night Lights) have been added to the Red Dawn cast. Peck will play Matt Eckert, the younger brother of Chris Hemsworth's Jed and the character that Charlie Sheen played in the original movie. Palicki will play Toni Mason, the role that Jennifer Grey originally portrayed.

Both HitFix and Deadline Hollywood Daily have reported that actor Chris Hemsworth has been cast in Red Dawn. Hemsworth, who can be currently seen on the big screen playing George Kirk in Star Trek, will take on the part that Patrick Swayze originally played in the 1984 version, that of older brother Jed Eckhart and leader of the Wolverines. Hemsworth is a well-known face to Australian soap opera fans after having starred in 171 episodes of Home and Away.

With casting now underway we've moved the phase of this film into the In Development category.

New details about Carl Ellsworth screenplay reboot of Red Dawn have been published by Latino Review in their latest video script review. Uncovered by the Latinos: the bad guys are the Chinese (with a helping hand by the Russians); the high school kids all have the same first names as their counterparts from the original 1984 film but there have been some changes to their nationalities; and modern day technology has been included in the Wolverine's arsenal to battle the invaders. Latino Review's El Mayimbe notes that the script could be tightened up a little but that as an action movie the new Red Dawn delivers the goods. Watch the script review video and you'll get the rest of the details.