Columbia Pictures is developing a remake of Flatliners, the 1990 film starring Kiefer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, William Baldwin and Oliver Platt. Directed by Joel Schumacher, the movie earned $61.5 million at the domestic box office.

The studio has hired Source Code writer Ben Ripley to pen the screenplay. Larry Mark is producing and Further Films is expected to be involved in some producorial capacity. David Blackman is overseeing the film for Mark's company Laurence Mark Productions.

In the film, Sutherland played ambitious, charismatic medical student Nelson, who persuades classmates to take part in a reckless experiment. To see if there is life after death, they will kill themselves: temporarily shut down ("flatline") their heart and brain functions to briefly experience clinical death. After Sutherland survives the first experiment, the others flatline for increasingly longer intervals.

But their horror begins when they realize that although they've come back alive... they haven't come back alone.