Stars React to 'Manchurian' Remake
July 30, 2004 -- -- A cynic might just ask who's being cast in the Al Pacino part for a Godfather remake rather than speculate about the reasons for remaking "The Manchurian Candidate."
Of course, remake does not mean necessarily mean sellout.
"People ask me that all the time, how could I allow this movie to be redone? That's the easiest question in the world," says Tina Sinatra, one of the film's producers. "I own the rights."
Her father, Frank Sinatra, starred in the 1962 film as a U.S. soldier who is captured during the Korean War, secretly brainwashed by communist agents, then sent home, along with other brainwashed POWs, as part of a plot to install a lethal pawn in the White House.
A year after the film's release, John F. Kennedy was shot dead, and "The Manchurian Candidate's" portrayal of a presidential assassin resonated throughout America, especially among conspiracy theorists.
Sinatra, a friend of Kennedy's, took the film out of circulation for 25 years, even though it was an instant classic, earning an Oscar nomination for Angela Lansbury.
"The country was too raw at the time," says Tina Sinatra.
"The Manchurian Candidate" finally was released on video in 1987, and was celebrated once again as a Cold War classic. In the years before his death, Frank Sinatra talked about updating the script, originally based on Richard Condon's best seller.
Now, in the new version, there's a new villain, and this one doesn't have a foreign accent. "I thought from the very beginning, it had to be us, not a foreign enemy," says Tina Sinatra, "That's what's truly creepy."
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