Remake of ’90s Horror Movie Faces Big Setback: Revamp of ‘Arachnophobia’ Loses Director

One 90s horror-movie reboot won’t be seeing the light of day after all.

The remake of the horror-comedy classic Arachnophobia has lost its director.

Christopher Landon, who directed Paranormal Activity 5, the Happy Death Day series, and Freaky, was once attached to the reboot. Now, he told TheWrap, that’s not going to happen.

While chatting about his new thriller Drop, he revealed his take on the spider-centric horror flick.

“I wrote a script that I loved. I actually think it was one of my best,” he said. “But the problem with that is that you still have to deal with other people who have different opinions about what kind of movie we should be making. This was a classic case of creative differences and it was something that I was not willing to change. Everybody moved on and that was just the way that it went. But at least it was a calm separation.”

He told the outlet that his take was “a remake in the sense of it being a spider invasion in a small… in this case, it was more of a West Texas town.” His version was more of a body horror flick than the original—in this “brutal” version, the spiders would use their fans to cut into the characters’ human flesh and lay eggs inside their bodies.

The plot would revolve around a mayoral race in the small town. One prospective candidate “had enormous influence over this particular town, because he was an old oil money family kind of guy,” and was written as a “Tim Allen-type,” meaning a character who was outwardly charming and nice but secretly evil and ruthless.

Landon said he would periodically ask people what they remember from the original, and the common response was the film’s famous shower scene and John Goodman’s role as the pest control exterminator.

“And I was like, ‘But what about the plot?’ And they often couldn’t articulate a plot. For me, that felt like an opportunity,” he said. “I wrote something I felt was very plot-driven. I had much bigger set pieces than the original. It was definitely a more expensive movie. That was another thing I think that made everybody a little bit nervous.”

Of course, Goodman was slated to come back in this new version—Landon had “written a great return” for him.

Landon’s new movie, the phone-centric thriller Drop, is in theaters now.