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Piranha (film)
Encyclopedia
Piranha is a 1978 American B movie
about a swarm of killer piranha
s. It was directed by Joe Dante
and starred Bradford Dillman
, Heather Menzies
, Kevin McCarthy
, Keenan Wynn
and Dick Miller
. Produced by Roger Corman
, Piranha is a parody
of the 1975 film Jaws
, which had been a major success for distributor Universal Studios
and director Steven Spielberg
, and inspired a series of similarly themed B movies such as Grizzly
, Tintorera
, Tentacles
, Orca
, Monster Shark
and Great White
.
Piranha was followed by a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning
, in 1981, and two remakes, one in 1995
, and another in 2010. The film was shot at Aquarena Springs
in San Marcos, Texas
. Screenwriter John Sayles
used the proceeds to fund his own films.
. The teenagers are attacked by an unseen force and disappear under the water. A light activates in the main building and a silhouetted figure investigates the screams, but is too late to help.
A determined but somewhat absent-minded insurance investigator named Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies
) is dispatched to find the missing teenagers near Lost River Lake. She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman
) to serve as her guide. They come upon the abandoned compound, which functioned as a fish hatchery prior to being militarized. They discover bizarre specimens in jars and indications of an occupant. Maggie locates the drainage switch for the outside pool and decides to empty it to search the bottom, but the moment she activates it a haggard and frantic man attacks her, attempting to stop the draining until he is subdued by Grogan. The two find a skeleton in the filtration trap of the empty pool, and learn it was filled with salt water. The man awakens and steals their jeep, but crashes it due to his disorientation, and is taken to Grogan's home where they spend the night. They take Grogan's homemade raft down the river, where the man wakes up and tells them that the pool in the facility was filled with a school of piranhas
, and that Maggie released them into the river. They are skeptical until they come across the corpse of Grogan's friend Jack (Keenan Wynn
), who has bled to death from an attack on a fishing dock.
The man reveals himself to be Doctor Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy
), the lead scientist of a defunct Vietnam War
project, Operation: Razorteeth, which was tasked with engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese rivers and inhibit Viet Cong movement. The project was shut down when the war ended, but some of the mutant specimens survived the poisoning protocols, and Hoak tended to them to salvage his work. Grogan realizes that if the local dam is opened, The School will have access to the Lost River water park (a tourist trap) and summer camp on the other side, where his daughter is in attendance. Traveling downriver, they encounter a capsized canoe with a boy whose father has been killed by the fish. Hoak rescues the boy but suffers mortal injuries when The School attacks him; he dies before he can tell how to kill them. Blood from Hoak's corpse causes the piranha to tear away the raft's lashings, and they barely get to shore. Grogan stops the dam attendant from opening the spillway and calls the military.
A military team led by Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon
) and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele
) feed poison into the upstream section, ignoring the protests that the fish survived the first attempt. When Grogan discovers that a tributary bypasses the dam, Waxman and Mengers quarantine them to prevent the agitated pair from alerting the media. When they escape, Waxman alerts law enforcement to capture them. The School attacks the summer camp during a swimming marathon, injuring and killing many of the children and a supervisor; Grogan's daughter, however, escapes due to her fear of water, and eventually rallies herself to aid her camp mates in escaping the killer fish.
The School continues downriver. Waxman and Mengers arrive at the water park to intercept Grogan and Maggie, but the piranha attack the resort, killing many, including Waxman. Grogan and Maggie commanded a speedboat and rush to the shuttered smelting
plant at the narrowest point of the river. Remembering the empty facility pond, Grogan realizes the fish can survive in salt water; if the school passes the delta, they will reach the ocean and spread over the entire world. He intends to open the smelting refuse tanks, hoping that the industrial waste will kill the fish. They arrive at the plant ahead of the fish, but the elevated water level has submerged the control office, and Grogan must go underwater; he ties a rope around his waist and instructs Maggie to count to 100 before pulling him out. Grogan struggles to move the rusted valve wheel when The School arrives and attacks him. The assault hyperadrenalizes him, and he manages to open the valves just as Maggie guns the engine and pulls him to safety. Maggie takes Grogan back to the water park, where a massive MEDEVAC
is tending to the victims; his injuries are severe and he is seen in a catatonic
state.
Mengers gives an on-site television interview, providing a sanitized version of events and downplaying the existence of piranha. Her voice is heard carrying out over a radio on the shore of a West Coast beach. As she says "there's nothing left to fear", the piranha's characteristic trilling sound drowns out the waves on a beach, indicating that the fish have made it to the ocean.
, 70% gave Piranha a positive review.
by New World Pictures in August 1978.
In 2004, New Concorde Home Entertainment
released the film on special edition
DVD
. This version is currently out of print
.
In 2010, Shout! Factory
re-released Piranha on DVD
and Blu-ray
.
Another remake of the 1978 film is directed by Alexandre Aja
, who again works with filmmaking partner Grégory Levasseur; the two have worked on other genre films as well, including the 2006 remake, The Hills Have Eyes
. Distributor Dimension Films
' Bob Weinstein
told Variety
, "We will maintain the fun and thrilling aspects of the original film, but look forward to upping the ante with a modern-day twist." Piranha 3D was theatrically released in the United States
on August 20, 2010 and is in 3D
.
Dimension had been developing the remake of the 1978 Joe Dante
film Piranha for over a year. It intended to have Chuck Russell
, who previously reworked the 1988 version of The Blob
, direct the film before taking on Alexandre Aja. Aja will rewrite a previous script from Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. Aja explains, "My goal is not to remake Piranha, but to create a completely new adventure paying homage to all the creature films [...] I am very proud to follow the path of Joe Dante and James Cameron
in the Piranha franchise and look forward to working with Greg Levasseur to write, produce, and direct such a fun and gory thrill ride.". The film's cast includes Elizabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd
, Richard Dreyfus, Adam Scott
, and Jerry O'Connell
.
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
about a swarm of killer piranha
Piranha
A piranha or piraña is a member of family Characidae in order Characiformes, an omnivorous freshwater fish that inhabits South American rivers. In Venezuela, they are called caribes...
s. It was directed by Joe Dante
Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and science fiction content....
and starred Bradford Dillman
Bradford Dillman
-Early life:Bradford Dillman was born on April 14, 1930 in San Francisco, California, the son of Josephine and Dean Dillman, a stockbroker. He studied at Town School for Boys and St. Ignatius High School. Later he attended the Hotchkiss boarding school in Connecticut, where he became involved in...
, Heather Menzies
Heather Menzies
Heather Urich , born December 3, 1949 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian-born actress who moved to California via Florida at the age of 11. She enrolled at the Falcon Studio’s University of the Arts, in Hollywood. Her first professional role at the age of 13 was on My Three Sons...
, Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy (actor)
Kevin McCarthy was an American stage, film, and television actor, who appeared in over two hundred television and film roles. For his role in the 1951 film version of Death of a Salesman, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of...
, Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....
and Dick Miller
Dick Miller
Richard "Dick" Miller is an American character actor who has appeared in over 100 films, particularly those produced by Roger Corman, and later in films of directors who started their careers with Corman, including James Cameron and Joe Dante, with the distinction of appearing in every film made...
. Produced by Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
, Piranha is a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the 1975 film Jaws
Jaws (film)
Jaws is a 1975 American horror-thriller film directed by Steven Spielberg and based on Peter Benchley's novel of the same name. In the story, the police chief of Amity Island, a fictional summer resort town, tries to protect beachgoers from a giant man-eating great white shark by closing the beach,...
, which had been a major success for distributor Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
and director Steven Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
, and inspired a series of similarly themed B movies such as Grizzly
Grizzly (film)
Grizzly is a 1976 horror film directed by William Girdler. The film is about an 18-foot man-eating Grizzly bear that terrorizes a National Forest. The film stars Christopher George, Andrew Prine and Richard Jaeckel...
, Tintorera
Tintorera
Tintorera is a 1977 Mexican-British horror directed by René Cardona Jr and starring Susan George, Hugo Stiglitz, Fiona Lewis and Andrés García. It is based on the novel of the same name by oceanographer Ramón Bravo that studied the species of shark known as "tintorera" and discovered the...
, Tentacles
Tentacles (film)
Tentacles is a 1977 Italian-American horror film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and starring John Huston and Shelley Winters.- Plot :The tourist spot Ocean Beach has come under attack by a giant octopus, which captures human swimmers and picks clean the skeletons of flesh and bone marrow...
, Orca
Orca (film)
Orca is a 1977 horror film directed by Michael Anderson and produced by Dino De Laurentiis, starring Richard Harris, Charlotte Rampling, and Will Sampson. The film was poorly received by critics and audiences alike due in part to its similarities to the film Jaws released two years prior...
, Monster Shark
Monster Shark
Monster Shark is a 1984 Italian horror film, and one of several environmental disaster films to emerge following the success of the 1975 film Jaws, including films such as: Great White, Orca, Piranha, Tentacles and Tintorera.- Plot :The film takes place along...
and Great White
Great White (film)
Great White is a 1980 Italian horror film directed by Enzo G. Castellari and starring James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. The film is extremely similar to Steven Spielberg's Jaws.-Plot:...
.
Piranha was followed by a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning
Piranha II: The Spawning
Piranha II: The Spawning, also known as Piranha II: Flying Killers, is a 1981 horror film, the sequel to the 1978 low-budget film Piranha, and the feature film directorial debut of James Cameron.-Plot:...
, in 1981, and two remakes, one in 1995
Piranha (1995 film)
Piranha also known as Piranhas is a 1995 American horror film directed by Scott P. Levy about a school of killer piranha descending upon the bustling Lost River Lake Resort...
, and another in 2010. The film was shot at Aquarena Springs
Aquarena Springs
Aquarena Center is an educational center in San Marcos, Texas dedicated to the preservation of the unique archeological and biological resources of Spring Lake. It is managed on behalf of Texas State University–San Marcos by the Texas River Systems Institute located in the Texas Rivers Center...
in San Marcos, Texas
San Marcos, Texas
San Marcos is a city in the U.S. state of Texas, and is the seat of Hays County. Located within the metropolitan area, the city is located on the Interstate 35 corridor—between Austin and San Antonio....
. Screenwriter John Sayles
John Sayles
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter and author.-Early life:Sayles was born in Schenectady, New York, the son of Mary , a teacher, and Donald John Sayles, a school administrator. He was raised Catholic and took to labeling himself "a Catholic atheist"...
used the proceeds to fund his own films.
Plot
Two teenagers exploring at night come upon an apparently abandoned military installation. They take advantage of what appears to be a swimming pool to skinny dipSkinny Dip
Skinny Dip is a caper novel by Carl Hiaasen first published in 2004.-Plot introduction:Set in South Florida in the course of April, 2003, it is about a woman, Joey Perrone, who takes revenge on her cheating husband after he has tried to murder her...
. The teenagers are attacked by an unseen force and disappear under the water. A light activates in the main building and a silhouetted figure investigates the screams, but is too late to help.
A determined but somewhat absent-minded insurance investigator named Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies
Heather Menzies
Heather Urich , born December 3, 1949 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian-born actress who moved to California via Florida at the age of 11. She enrolled at the Falcon Studio’s University of the Arts, in Hollywood. Her first professional role at the age of 13 was on My Three Sons...
) is dispatched to find the missing teenagers near Lost River Lake. She hires surly backwoods drunkard Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman
Bradford Dillman
-Early life:Bradford Dillman was born on April 14, 1930 in San Francisco, California, the son of Josephine and Dean Dillman, a stockbroker. He studied at Town School for Boys and St. Ignatius High School. Later he attended the Hotchkiss boarding school in Connecticut, where he became involved in...
) to serve as her guide. They come upon the abandoned compound, which functioned as a fish hatchery prior to being militarized. They discover bizarre specimens in jars and indications of an occupant. Maggie locates the drainage switch for the outside pool and decides to empty it to search the bottom, but the moment she activates it a haggard and frantic man attacks her, attempting to stop the draining until he is subdued by Grogan. The two find a skeleton in the filtration trap of the empty pool, and learn it was filled with salt water. The man awakens and steals their jeep, but crashes it due to his disorientation, and is taken to Grogan's home where they spend the night. They take Grogan's homemade raft down the river, where the man wakes up and tells them that the pool in the facility was filled with a school of piranhas
Piranha
A piranha or piraña is a member of family Characidae in order Characiformes, an omnivorous freshwater fish that inhabits South American rivers. In Venezuela, they are called caribes...
, and that Maggie released them into the river. They are skeptical until they come across the corpse of Grogan's friend Jack (Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn
Keenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....
), who has bled to death from an attack on a fishing dock.
The man reveals himself to be Doctor Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy
Kevin McCarthy (actor)
Kevin McCarthy was an American stage, film, and television actor, who appeared in over two hundred television and film roles. For his role in the 1951 film version of Death of a Salesman, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of...
), the lead scientist of a defunct Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
project, Operation: Razorteeth, which was tasked with engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese rivers and inhibit Viet Cong movement. The project was shut down when the war ended, but some of the mutant specimens survived the poisoning protocols, and Hoak tended to them to salvage his work. Grogan realizes that if the local dam is opened, The School will have access to the Lost River water park (a tourist trap) and summer camp on the other side, where his daughter is in attendance. Traveling downriver, they encounter a capsized canoe with a boy whose father has been killed by the fish. Hoak rescues the boy but suffers mortal injuries when The School attacks him; he dies before he can tell how to kill them. Blood from Hoak's corpse causes the piranha to tear away the raft's lashings, and they barely get to shore. Grogan stops the dam attendant from opening the spillway and calls the military.
A military team led by Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon
Bruce Gordon (actor)
Bruce Gordon was an American actor best known for playing Frank Nitti in the ABC television series The Untouchables....
) and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele
Barbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday , now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr...
) feed poison into the upstream section, ignoring the protests that the fish survived the first attempt. When Grogan discovers that a tributary bypasses the dam, Waxman and Mengers quarantine them to prevent the agitated pair from alerting the media. When they escape, Waxman alerts law enforcement to capture them. The School attacks the summer camp during a swimming marathon, injuring and killing many of the children and a supervisor; Grogan's daughter, however, escapes due to her fear of water, and eventually rallies herself to aid her camp mates in escaping the killer fish.
The School continues downriver. Waxman and Mengers arrive at the water park to intercept Grogan and Maggie, but the piranha attack the resort, killing many, including Waxman. Grogan and Maggie commanded a speedboat and rush to the shuttered smelting
Smelting
Smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes iron extraction from iron ore, and copper extraction and other base metals from their ores...
plant at the narrowest point of the river. Remembering the empty facility pond, Grogan realizes the fish can survive in salt water; if the school passes the delta, they will reach the ocean and spread over the entire world. He intends to open the smelting refuse tanks, hoping that the industrial waste will kill the fish. They arrive at the plant ahead of the fish, but the elevated water level has submerged the control office, and Grogan must go underwater; he ties a rope around his waist and instructs Maggie to count to 100 before pulling him out. Grogan struggles to move the rusted valve wheel when The School arrives and attacks him. The assault hyperadrenalizes him, and he manages to open the valves just as Maggie guns the engine and pulls him to safety. Maggie takes Grogan back to the water park, where a massive MEDEVAC
MEDEVAC
Medical evacuation, often termed Medevac or Medivac, is the timely and efficient movement and en route care provided by medical personnel to the wounded being evacuated from the battlefield or to injured patients being evacuated from the scene of an accident to receiving medical facilities using...
is tending to the victims; his injuries are severe and he is seen in a catatonic
Catatonia
Catatonia is a state of neurogenic motor immobility, and behavioral abnormality manifested by stupor. It was first described in 1874: Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein ....
state.
Mengers gives an on-site television interview, providing a sanitized version of events and downplaying the existence of piranha. Her voice is heard carrying out over a radio on the shore of a West Coast beach. As she says "there's nothing left to fear", the piranha's characteristic trilling sound drowns out the waves on a beach, indicating that the fish have made it to the ocean.
Cast
- Bradford DillmanBradford Dillman-Early life:Bradford Dillman was born on April 14, 1930 in San Francisco, California, the son of Josephine and Dean Dillman, a stockbroker. He studied at Town School for Boys and St. Ignatius High School. Later he attended the Hotchkiss boarding school in Connecticut, where he became involved in...
as Paul Grogan - Heather MenziesHeather MenziesHeather Urich , born December 3, 1949 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is a Canadian-born actress who moved to California via Florida at the age of 11. She enrolled at the Falcon Studio’s University of the Arts, in Hollywood. Her first professional role at the age of 13 was on My Three Sons...
as Maggie McKeown - Kevin McCarthyKevin McCarthy (actor)Kevin McCarthy was an American stage, film, and television actor, who appeared in over two hundred television and film roles. For his role in the 1951 film version of Death of a Salesman, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and won a Golden Globe Award for New Star of...
as Dr. Robert Hoak - Keenan WynnKeenan WynnKeenan Wynn was an American character actor. His bristling mustache and expressive face were his stock in trade, and though he rarely had a lead role, he got prominent billing in most of his film and TV parts....
as Jack - Dick MillerDick MillerRichard "Dick" Miller is an American character actor who has appeared in over 100 films, particularly those produced by Roger Corman, and later in films of directors who started their careers with Corman, including James Cameron and Joe Dante, with the distinction of appearing in every film made...
as Buck Gardner - Barbara SteeleBarbara SteeleBarbara Steele is an English film actress. She is best known for starring in Italian gothic horror films of the 1960s. Her breakthrough role came in Italian director Mario Bava's Black Sunday , now hailed as a classic.Steele starred in a string of horror films, including The Horrible Dr...
as Dr. Mengers - Belinda BalaskiBelinda BalaskiBelinda Balaski is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her large supporting role in Joe Dante's The Howling , and has continued to appear in most of Dante's films including an important role in "Piranha" and cameos in "Gremlins", "Gremlins 2", "Matinee", and Small Soldiers...
as Betsy - Melody Thomas ScottMelody Thomas ScottMelody Thomas Scott is an American actress, best known for playing Nikki Newman on the soap opera The Young and the Restless since 1979.-Early Training:Melody Thomas Scott has been a working actress since the age of three...
as Laura Dickinson - Bruce GordonBruce Gordon (actor)Bruce Gordon was an American actor best known for playing Frank Nitti in the ABC television series The Untouchables....
as Colonel Waxman - Barry Brown as a Trooper
- Paul BartelPaul BartelPaul Bartel was an American actor, writer and director. Bartel was perhaps most known for his 1982 hit black comedy Eating Raoul, which he wrote, starred in and directed.-Life and career:...
as Mr. Dumont - Shannon Collins as Suzie Grogan
Reception
Based on reviews from 23 critics collected by the film review aggregator Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, 70% gave Piranha a positive review.
Release
The film was released theatrically in the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
by New World Pictures in August 1978.
In 2004, New Concorde Home Entertainment
New Concorde
New Concorde is a Los Angeles, California based film distribution company founded by Roger Corman. NC got its start in 1983 when Corman formed the production and distribution Concorde-New Horizons as one of the first production companies to develop and take advantage of video as a distribution...
released the film on special edition
Special edition
The terms special edition, limited edition and variants such as deluxe edition, collector's edition and others, are used as a marketing incentive for various kinds of products, originally published products related to the arts, such as books, prints or recorded music and films, but now including...
DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
. This version is currently out of print
Out of print
Out of print refers to an item, typically a book , but can include any print or visual media or sound recording, that is in the state of no longer being published....
.
In 2010, Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory
Shout! Factory is an entertainment company founded in 2003 that was started by Richard Foos , Bob Emmer and Garson Foos initially as a specialty music label...
re-released Piranha on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
.
Remakes
Piranha was first remade in 1995, and this version was also produced by Roger Corman and originally debuted on Showtime. It used footage from the original for certain sequences.Another remake of the 1978 film is directed by Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja
Alexandre Aja is a French film director who rose to international stardom for his 2003 horror film Haute Tension .-Personal life:...
, who again works with filmmaking partner Grégory Levasseur; the two have worked on other genre films as well, including the 2006 remake, The Hills Have Eyes
The Hills Have Eyes (2006 film)
The Hills Have Eyes is a 2006 horror film and remake of Wes Craven's 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes. Written by filmmaking partners Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur of the French horror film Haute Tension, and directed by Aja, the film follows a family who becomes the target of a group of...
. Distributor Dimension Films
Dimension Films
Dimension Films is a motion picture unit currently a part of The Weinstein Company. It was formerly used as Bob Weinstein's label within Miramax Films, to produce and release genre films...
' Bob Weinstein
Bob Weinstein
Robert "Bob" Weinstein is an American film and theatre producer, the founder and head of Dimension Films, former co-chairman of Miramax Films, and current head, with his brother Harvey Weinstein, of The Weinstein Company.-Career:...
told Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
, "We will maintain the fun and thrilling aspects of the original film, but look forward to upping the ante with a modern-day twist." Piranha 3D was theatrically released in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
on August 20, 2010 and is in 3D
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...
.
Dimension had been developing the remake of the 1978 Joe Dante
Joe Dante
Joseph "Joe" Dante, Jr. is an American film director and producer of films generally with humorous and science fiction content....
film Piranha for over a year. It intended to have Chuck Russell
Chuck Russell
Charles "Chuck" Russell is an American motion picture director, producer and actor.-Filmography:*The Hearse *Hell Night *The Seduction...
, who previously reworked the 1988 version of The Blob
The Blob (1988 film)
The Blob is a 1988 American monster horror film distributed by Tristar Pictures. It is a remake of the 1958 film of the same name, which starred Steve McQueen. The film was written by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont and directed by Russell. The shooting took place in Abbeville, Louisiana.-Plot:A...
, direct the film before taking on Alexandre Aja. Aja will rewrite a previous script from Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger. Aja explains, "My goal is not to remake Piranha, but to create a completely new adventure paying homage to all the creature films [...] I am very proud to follow the path of Joe Dante and James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
in the Piranha franchise and look forward to working with Greg Levasseur to write, produce, and direct such a fun and gory thrill ride.". The film's cast includes Elizabeth Shue, Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Allen Lloyd is an American actor. He is best known for playing Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, and Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He played Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the television series Taxi and more...
, Richard Dreyfus, Adam Scott
Adam Scott (actor)
Adam Scott is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Henry Pollard in the Starz comedy series Party Down and as Ben Wyatt in the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation....
, and Jerry O'Connell
Jerry O'Connell
Jeremiah "Jerry" O'Connell is an American actor, best known for his roles in the TV series Sliders, Andrew Clements in My Secret Identity, Vern Tessio in the film Stand by Me, Charlie Carbone in Kangaroo Jack, and Detective Woody Hoyt on the drama Crossing Jordan...
.