David Gordon Green set out to remake Dario Argento’s classic horror film a few years back, but it’s taken a while to actually get moving. Now that the finances are in order and casting is underway, /Film is reporting that the production has found its star: Isabelle Furhman.
The fifteen year old actress is best known for her role in Jaume Collet-Sera’s ‘Orphan’, but she’s also appeared in ‘The Hunger Games’ as Clove and she’ll be seen in M. Night Shyamalan’s Will and Jaden Smith vehicle ‘After Earth’. In Suspiria’, Furhman will take over the role that was originally supposed to go to Natalie Portman back in 2008 when the project was first announced. She will join Isabelle Huppert, Janet McTeer, Michael Nyqvist, and Antje Traue, who all have unnamed roles at the moment.
Argento’s original 1977 movie followed Suzy, an American girl who attends a prestigious European academy that acts as a front for a coven of witches. In terms of how faithful Green and co-writer Chris Gilbert stayed to the original, the director had this to say:
“It’s less about ballet and more of a story about the occult and a boarding school for girls in Germany. Scene for scene it’s very similar. In terms of the aesthetic, I haven’t really worked [it] out yet. I’ve just started to get my cinematographer and production designer to look at it, and I’m sure we’re all going to bring our ideas to the table. I don’t want to emulate him or rip him off, I don’t want to do a shot for shot remake of it. But I do feel like it’s a springboard to a lot of huge ideas, and a lot of artful, magnificent ideas. Things that aren’t in the movie theaters in the genre right now.”
Now that the project has money and a star, filming is set to begin in September of this year.
