Leonardo DiCaprio looks to have his sights set on Global Thermonuclear War. More specifically, he wants to remake the now classic War Games.
Production Weekly is reporting that Leonardo DiCaprio is looking to produce a reboot of the classic 1983 sci-fi hacker film WarGames. The original WarGames is a great geek flick, a flashback to the days when a 1200 baud modem was fast, and capable of destroying the world. Plus, this is a movie which features the first cinematic reference to a “firewall”. But could the story be updated to modern times without becoming the mess that was The Dead Code? I’m not quite sure.
An attempt to sequel War Games went direct to DVD with WarGames:The Dead Code, which was less a sequel as much as it was a reboot (same plot and same resolution) and it wasn’t popular by any means.
I am not sure that you COULD do a reboot to this without our current world view of computer gaming and hacking interfering. The only way I could see this rebooted is if he dared to try and set this in the early 80s and attempted to capture some of the original charm of the movie.
Now, we can watch War Games and see it for the story it tells, in the political climate of that day and the technological limitations of that time. But now, a 12 year old nerd could hack the WOPR computer mainframe and shut it down. There really isn’t anything from that movie that we couldn’t solve in this day and time.
I applaud Leonardo for picking a great nostalgic classic movie, but I will have to hear his pitch before I am on board with that.
