Well, blimey. Some Hollywood executive has been spending their weekends trawling the archives at their local Blockbuster, that much seems certain.

The latest addition, therefore, to the Hollywood remake gravy train is the 1981 Sean Connery western in space sci-fi flick, Outland, which Warner Bros is bringing back to the big screen. Outland was originally written and directed by Peter Hyams, and features - of course - Sean Connery (sporting an obscene amount of body hair) as the police marshal on a mining colony on one of Jupiter's moons. In the original, he was faced with the late Peter Boyle's nasty boss, whose workers are under the influence of a drug to boost their productivity. In our office, that stuff is called ‘caffeine'. Ahem.

Anyway, the new version would be just another remake to us were it not for the personnel involved. Because being lined up to direct is Michael Davis, who brought the utterly bonkers and deliriously entertaining Shoot ‘Em Up to the screen. Davis told Variety, "We're staying true to the thematic heart of `Outland' while expanding the space frontier concept." Which, roughly translated, we'd suggest actually means they're doing what they want.

There's no time scale in place, but the fact that there's a director on board does seem to indicate that it's full steam ahead. And this may, under Davis' stewardship, prove to be a remake worth watching.

Here's hoping they don't skimp on the exploding people, though.

Variety

• The production design of Outland (1981)
• Top 75 spaceships in TV and movies: The Outland shuttle
• Top 10 exploding people (featuring Outland)