New Flatliners Movie Is A Sequel, Says Kiefer Sutherland

It seems the new take on ‘Flatliners’ may not be quite what we had anticipated.

All indications to date had been that director Niels Arden Oplev’s film was to be a direct remake of Joel Schumacher’s 1990 sci-fi horror – but according to star Kiefer Sutherland, this isn’t the case at all.

It seems the new film is instead a sequel, as Sutherland (who played the lead in the original, and was recently cast in the new film) explained to Metro last week:

“I play a professor at the medical university. It is never stated but it will probably be very clearly understood that I’m the same character I was in the original ‘Flatliners.’”

He continues, “I have changed my name and I’ve done some things to move on from the experiments that we were doing in the original film.”

Explaining what drew him back, Sutherland said, “I loved making the first film and when I was asked if I would be interested in taking part in this, it didn’t take more than a minute to say yes.”

The 1990 movie cast Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt and William Baldwin as medical students experimenting with near-death experiences in the hopes of discovering the truth about the afterlife.

This new film casts Ellen Page, James Norton, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrevand and Kiersey Clemons as a new group of medical students following in Sutherland’s footsteps.

This revelation from Sutherland comes in the same week that Disney announced a new take on ‘The Rocketeer,’ planned not as a remake but as a direct sequel to the original film, based around new characters – much the same approach as ‘Jurassic World’ and ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’

Can we expect the ‘reboot-sequel’ to become a big new trend in Hollywood? Let’s see.

Currently in production in Canada, ‘Flatliners’ is expected in cinemas summer 2017.

Picture Credit: Sony

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