While Universal has been in control of the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, was scripting as well as producing the remake with Daniel Bobker, but the thought of redoing Cronenberg without that psychedelic '80s context felt wrong.

Nevertheless, Universal is continuing to plug along, and today have announced celebrated commercial director Adam Berg will helm the project. Berg, best known for his freeze-frame reboot of Daredevil.

There's no denying that Berg has a certain sense of visual panache, and that he's an exciting up-and-coming filmmaker, but handing over Cronenberg source material, and Videodrome at that, as a first feature is a bit odd.

As far as Videodrome is concerned, the original starred James Woods as the character of Max Renn, a down-and-out Cable TV station owner who was looking for the next big thing. Enter 'Videodrome,' a hyper realistic series based around crude acts of violence -- that ultimately begins distorting its viewers' sense of reality.

Videodrome was Cronenberg, who'd just literally blown minds with Cosmopolis.

There are several different ways in which Kruger and Bobker could approach Videodrome – set it as an expose on reality television, make yet another commentary on the media's obsession with violence – but the two initially pitched the project to Universal with the intent to “modernize the concept, infusing it with the possibilities of nano-technology and blow it up into a large-scale sci-fi action thriller.” Granted, there are a lot of logic leaps that audiences have to make when viewing Videodrome, but attempting to explain the bizarre content away with nano-technology is likely to diminish the narrative's appeal.

It's still fairly early, but the placement of Berg on the project gives the impression it's starting to get off the ground. Hopefully the combination of the director's visual style and some strong writing from Kruger can help elevate the project to a status above being simply another '80s sci-fi remake.

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Source: Deadline