5 Good Things: Films That Deserve a Modern Day Remake

A PERFECT MURDER

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Michael Douglas, Viggo Mortensen

Steven, a Wall Street big shot (Michael Douglas) is married to a very affluent, much younger wife Emily (Gwyneth). On the exterior, they live the elite fairytale in their Upper East Side penthouse overlooking Central Park. He is in financial straits, much to do with his hedge funds, she comes from generational wealth and also works as a translator for the United Nations. Emily is having an affair with a Brooklyn artist (Viggo), her husband finds out all about him only to then devise a scheme where he hires the lover to kill Emily so that he can collect the life insurance money and to gain access to her $100mil trust fund. Her lover agrees, the stage is set and nothing goes to plan at the very last minute. It’s a quiet thriller set back in a time before all the cheesy, overdone true crime/crime dramas (The Perfect Couple is a good example) came along and saturated an entire genre.

For the role of:

Emily: Zendaya

Steven, husband: Benedict Cumberbatch

Artist, Emily’s lover: Charles Melton

I would keep the storyline, and set to current year. It would be interesting to see the dynamic of a marriage born out of NY Social Diary that turns into a 20/20 special. In the original, the wide age gap between Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow was intentional to portray a natural tension in the marriage. Zendaya’s rich uptown girl wardrobe and hairdo, this would be a film that partners with a fashion house.

WORKING GIRL

Starring Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, Sigourney Weaver

This 80’s classic New York film is about Tess (Melanie Griffith) from Staten Island who dreams of making it big in the city. Stuck as a receptionist at a global finance firm, she starts her way up the corporate ladder when she’s the executive asst to Katherine (Sigourney Weaver) who although encourages Tess to think creatively out of the box, she’s also quick to steal her assistants ideas to credit as her own. While Katherine is out of town, Tess substitutes herself as Katherine in meetings and deals that she’s lined up for herself, Tess that is. She meets and teams up w/Jack (Harrison Ford), a handsome, smart investment banker, they do the deal together and fall in love. It’s about being a woman working in a competitive male populated industry, but also how women should support women in business and in life.

For the role of:

Tess: Ayo Edebiri

Jack: Drew Starkey (I personally think he could be the next Harrison Ford)

Katherine: Carrie Coon

I am surprised that they haven’t produced a remake of Working Girl, but I would love to see a rendition where instead of the world of finance, the story changes to publishing. Thanks to TikTok, books are at its peak. I for one love the day in my life vlogs of book publishing girls. However, I would beg for it to be more realistic than the series Younger, which did more to focus on the social media side of publishing than the actual cutthroat business of publishing.