Arachnophobia remake in the pipeline from Steven Spielberg's Amblin

Arachnophobia, the eight-legged PG-horror-comedy from 1990, is set to get a remake.

Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment, which made the original, is behind it, with James Wan set to produce.

Wan is currently finishing up Aquaman for Warner Bros and DC, but has extensive horror experience, from directing the first Saw movie (producing the others) through to Insidious and The Conjuring.

Whether this means that the horror could outweigh the comedy in this new iteration is not yet clear, and there’s also no word yet on who will either write or direct the project.

The original movie was one of the few movies directed by Frank Marshall, producer of the Indiana Jones and Back the the Future films.

Harking back to the b-movies of the 50s and 60s, it found Jeff Daniels’ small town GP discovering the horrible secret behind a series of local deaths, all of which turn out to be from a deadly species of spider brought back to the US from the Amazon.

As well as a phobia-inducing final act, involving a leaping giant queen spider, the movie also featured a memorable performance from John Goodman as local pest control expert Delbert McClintock.

It grossed $53 million at the box office, and though it cost a healthy $30 million to make, it grossed a further $30 million through video rental.

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