The Orphanage remake has original producer Guillermo del Toro onboard and indie horror-meister at the helm

Actor/producer/director Larry Fessenden sure has a lot to live up to (to say the least), having signed on to direct a New Line remake of the Guillermo del Toro-produced Spanish horror The Orphanage. THR originally reported the story.

The Orphanage is such a brilliant film, but I guess del Toro wants to share the story with a wider audience than the original, and I really hope this new film works half as well as the Spanish-language version. If you haven’t watched it, you must… and not just horror fans, but fans of suspenseful, well-made films in general.

I’m a big fan of Fessenden, who also co-wrote the script for the new version with del Toro. Del Toro will again produce, along with Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson, two of the producers behind the Red Dawn remake (another film that has a mountain of greatness to live up to). Fessenden has worked mostly on low-budget horror films that he usually produces, including No Telling, Wendigo and The Last Winter. He also directed a particularly gory episode of the TV anthology series Fear Itself, titled Skin and Bones.

The 2007 original instant classic was directed by del Toro protege Juan Antonio Bayona and followed the story of a woman who returns to the orphanage where she grew up and discovers that her son’s imaginary friend, is the same spirit who terrorized her as a child.

According to THR’s report-

Del Toro and Fessenden know each other from the horror circuit, with del Toro’s admiration of the triple-hyphenate’s work leading him to handpick him for the directing gig; del Toro saw in him a filmmaker who understood the conventions of the horror genre and could execute a movie that would be as scary and disturbing as the original but in an American context.

Check out the trailer for the original El orfanato a.k.a. The Orphanage.