I remember catching Attack of the 50 Foot Woman late one night on cable, probably around 1987, in between mouthfuls of stale pretzels and sips of something distinctly not gourmet. The film's charms were utterly accidental—bad effects, melodramatic acting, a plot that made as much sense as a Salvador Dalí fever dream. It wasn't cinema, exactly. It was more like time travel: Here was a relic of postwar American pop culture, a B-movie so inept it looped around to being oddly sincere. I haven't thought much about Allison Hayes' doomed heiress since.
Until now. Because Hollywood, ever desperate and ever cyclical, is giving it another go. And this time, they've brought out the big guns: Tim Burton, Margot Robbie, Warner Bros., and a script that's already gone through one round with Gillian Flynn, who has since gracefully bowed out, probably to work on something with fewer literal giants.
Let's get the facts straight first. The film is still in development. No confirmed release date. No festival bookings, no teaser reel, no first-look deal at CinemaCon. It's real enough to have Robbie—fresh off Barbie—attached as both star and producer through her LuckyChap banner, but loose enough that they're shopping for a new writer after Flynn's draft. The InSneider, that invaluable gossip monger, has the details, and for now, that's the best we've got.
But let's not pretend this is just another day at the studio barn. This is Burton, who hasn't delivered a true knockout since Sweeney Todd in 2007—and even that had a few stumbles. After the gummy Dumbo and the “two Beetlejuices are better than one” school of thought, you wonder: Is there any edge left in the man who once made Ed Wood and Mars Attacks!? Does he still have the appetite—or the freedom—to let a story like this go deliciously unhinged?
Robbie's a smart choice, but then Hollywood's always smart when it comes to casting after a hit. She's bankable, she's talented, and she knows how to handle a project with both hands. But let's not lie—casting a star in a campy, effects-heavy remake is about as risky as a glass of warm milk. What I want to know is whether Burton will let her run wild, or if the film will sand off all the dangerous edges for a family-friendly, four-quadrant snooze.
The original Attack didn't have much going for it, but boy, did it have attitude. Allison Hayes, a woman scorned, grew to absurd heights and rampaged through a cardboard town, a metaphor for female rage that was crudely handled but impossible to ignore. Will Burton and Robbie push that idea further, or will we get another glossy, irony-laced blockbuster that winks at the camera without ever raising its voice?
Here's what gives me pause: The last time Burton tried a big remake, we got Dumbo—a film so drowned in pastel mush it made me long for the days when Disney at least had the decency to be heavy-handed. And the last time Warner Bros. tried to capitalize on a star's momentum, we got… well, let's not relive all that. The track record is spotty. The IP machine grinds on.
But maybe there's hope. Robbie's shown she's willing to take risks—not always successful ones, but risks nonetheless. Burton, at his best, can find the melancholy in the manic, the poetry in the absurd. If this becomes a story about alienation, about a woman who literally outgrows her world, that could be something. If it's just about destruction and spectacle, well, we've seen that, too. At the multiplex. Last summer. Next summer. Every summer, until the sun burns out.
So—what's this really about? Another payday? Another notch on the IP belt? Or is there a chance Burton and Robbie will do something genuinely surprising, something that might even make me sit up in my seat instead of just sighing at the pixels? I'll be watching, but I'm not holding my breath. As for the rest of you—remember the original, even if you never saw it. Remember what made it memorable. Not the effects. Certainly not the dialogue. The sheer, unhinged audacity. If they can bottle even a little of that, maybe there's something here worth getting excited about.
