A great (and I use the word advisedly) tradition of the media industry is remaking older tv shows/films/etc. and I’ve found out that the Lifetime Network in the US has been at it. The new TV movie was first aired at the weekend.
To be fair to them they’ve not ‘done a Spider-man’ and made a three versions in less than 20 years. Lifetime went back to 1994 for Death Of A Cheerleader, also known as A Friend To Die For. Based on a true story, the drama dealt with the murder of a high-school girl by one of her classmates. Kathryn had a small role as a Goth teenager, bullied for being different by our victim the popular girl as played by Tori Spelling. It was one of Kathryn’s early on screen performances.
Often in these remakes they like to try and draw in fans of the original by casting someone from it in the new one. As the actor will have aged it often means a child in the first becomes a parent, possibly of the same character. From what I can see they haven’t done that, but they have cast Kellie Martin, the original teen killer, as a police detective in the remake. I guess they can go with the idea of her having to catch her teenage self. Sadly they didn’t go for Kathryn as well. She could have been a cool art teacher with a dark streak, or an English teacher keen on Gothic horrors. Oh well.
2019’s DOAC will have a number of updates brought about by a quarter of a century of of changes. I’m sure mobilephones and social media play their parts, along with some adjustments to take into account the way we view certain behaviours etc.
But rather than me make pronouncements on a TV movie I haven’t seen why not read a review of the new version of Death Of A Cheerlader by Mads Lennon (now that’s a name!) over at the Hidden Remote website HERE.
As a comparison why not check out Trevor Wells’ article about the original 1994, conveniently posted very recently, on the Geeks Media site HERE.
They both mention Kathryn and her character so get props from us.
KM UK briefly covered Death Of A Cheerleader way back in 2011 HERE.
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