Colin Farrell in Total Recall remake: filming starts 15 May 2011

12 January 2011

John Howell

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Paul Verhoeven's 1990 movie Total Recall was a pulpish, high testosterone, over the top gore fest, but it appears the upcoming remake will be different. MTV has revealed the Total Recall remake is shifting into high gear with Colin Farrell almost (but not quite) confirmed as the lead. When MTV asked if he's definitely doing Total Recall Farrell said: "I hope so. I think so. Yeah, I think so. Maybe in May."

Director Len Wiseman (the Underworld director) has taken on the film. Earlier Farrell said that Wiseman's planned remake would be "quite different."

"This is going back to the original short story," he said. "It's closer to the original short story."

Philip K. Dick's We Can Remember It For You Wholesale was published in 1966 and told the story of a man called Douglas Quail who cannot afford to visit Mars and so pays to have memories of Mars implanted in his brain. While Quail is having his memories injected, he discovers he actually has been to Mars and that he is also a lethal assassin whose mind is packed with highly sensitive government secrets. In the original film, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Quaid travels to Mars.

"It's going to be beautiful," Farrell told MTV. "I saw some of the artwork, some of the pre-visualization stuff of the world that [Wiseman's] folks are creating. And it's really beautiful, really really cool. And I've had a good experience telling Philip K. Dick stories. Well, I've only had the one experience, but Minority Report was such a blast. Yeah, this could be a lot of fun."

In a more recent article in Collider, the movie's producer, Neal Moritz, seemed to throw all casting doubts aside. "We're doing the movie with Colin Farrell," he said. According to Moritz Total Recall remake starts shooting May 15 in Toronto. The film will not be in 3D though. They decided it would be too much as a 3D picture. However, he claimed the film would be "bigger in scope" than Green Hornet and Battle: Los Angeles. "Oh yes, this is a big movie," he claimed.

He described the future world that is being created.

"I think the world that Len Wiseman is creating is incredible. It's a real world, a real future world, where the cities have just gotten so overcrowded that the cities are just built up, up, up, up. It's just everything I see on the movie, every pre-vis I see on the movie, every conceptual drawing on this movie that I see just makes me more and more excited. We're playing it like a real world, but there's all these technological advancements to the real world, and it's just really, it's cool. It's an awesome movie. I'm dying—as a fan of movies, more than anything, it's a movie that I'm just dying to see."

I wasn't that thrilled when they first announced a remake, but the more I hear about the new Total Recall the better it gets. Colin Farrell cetainly trumps Schwarzenegger in the acting department. It's another science fiction film to look forward to.

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