Easy Rider: The reboot craze didn’t save a 1960s counterculture classic either

It made headlines that the 1969 counterculture classic, Easy Rider – Freedom and Fearfrom Dennis Hopperwho also wrote and performed it along with Peter Fonda it’s in Jack Nicholsongoing to have “updated” reboot. The first announcement was made by Variety, which caused a lot of bewilderment. But is it possible to make a modern Easy Rider, and moreover, does it make sense?

Easy Rider: The Original and Reboot

Rights Easy Riderscripted biker movie Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda As well as Terry Southern, in which two young hippie bikers crossed America in classic helicopters, became addicted to sex and psychedelics, and were targeted by the country’s most reactionary elements, was also a cultural phenomenon. The film, shot on a small budget and entirely on its own, was nominated for two Oscars (Best Supporting Actor). Jack Nicholson and Best Original Screenplay) and won the Dennis Hopper Cannes Prize for best first job. Not more than two years ago, it was released in theaters again, and the American Film Institute included it among the 100 best films in cinema history. Today, the rights are owned by a consortium of investors and producers — Maurice Fadida’s Kodiak Pictures, Eric B. Fleischman’s Defiant Studios, and the Jean Boulle Group — whose managers are looking for writers and directors who can bring the story back to the present day while maintaining the old radical approach.

“Our goal,” Fadida told Variety, “is to build on the counterculture and the theme of freedom left to us by the original to give today’s youth a film that takes seriously their counterculture and hardships.” However, this statement already hides the problem inherent in such a reboot. Original authors they did not sit down to study topics that were dear to the rebellious youth of that time, but simply brought their experiences of young people to the screen in an innovative narrative form. It seems to us that the difference between the two approaches is significant, and we are on the side of those who consider it impossible to update and remake such work. But Hollywood, which has been in an original creative idea crisis for some time now, certainly won’t stop.