During James Cameron’s appearance as the guest of honor at Paris’ Cinematheque Française (via Variety), the legendary filmmaker gave an update on the remake of the 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage.
Cameron had expressed his interest in producing the Fantastic Voyage remake since the late ‘90s but has since redirected his attention to one of his highest-grossing features, Avatar. The passion project has — to say the least — long been in development, with Guillermo del Toro having been confirmed to take the director’s chair back in 2016.
Now, over eight years later, Cameron has brought up his plans to produce a remake of the original Richard Fleischer-helmed movie.
“We’ve been developing it for a number of years, and we plan to go ahead with it very soon. Raquel Welch is not available, but we think we can make a pretty good movie,” said Cameron.
The long-gestating remake is said to be produced by Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, with David Goyer on board to write the script.
What is Fantastic Voyage about?
The film centered on a scientist named Jan Benes (Jean Del Val), who went into a coma due to an assassination attempt after he succeeded in perfecting the miniaturization process. To save him, a team underwent miniaturization in order to permeate Jan’s body and ultimately fix the blood clot in his brain. They all must work for a limited amount of time before the procedure wears off.
The 1966 film starred Stephen Boyd as Charles Grant, Raquel Welch as Cora Peterson, William Redfield as Captain Bill Owens, Edmond O’Brien as General Alan Carter, Arthur O’Connell as Colonel Donald Reid, Donald Pleasence as Dr. Michaels, and Arthur Kennedy as Dr. Peter Duval.
The rest of the cast includes Barry Coe, Ken Scott, Shelby Grant, and James Brolin.