Steve McQueen movie faces Zombie remake

With a name like Rob Zombie and a desire to direct, it’s clear you won’t get many love stories. And Rob has stayed true to his low-budget roots.

After resurrecting the ‘Halloween’ franchise in 2007, then bowing a sequel that opens today, the 34-year old writer-director has been given the challenge to write, direct and produce a ‘reinvention’ of Paramount’s 1958 sci-fi thriller, ‘The Blob,’ which starred Steve McQueen.

In the ’58 schlock-horror classic, a large rock with a bright red, carnivorous center crashes into a field and begins to slither through town, eating folks as it goes. Rob’s a big fan of this wrinkly classic, but he plans a new take on the deal, “My intention is not to have a big red blobby thing,” Rob [born as just, Robert Cummings,] told Variety. “Man-eating Jello might have scared audiences then, but these days most people would laugh.”

His overall plan is for an R-rated film, with a budget of just $30-million. And Rob is fired up and ready to play, “I’ve been looking to break out of the horror genre, and this is really a Sci-Fi movie about a thing from outer space,” he says. “I intend to make it scary, and I have the freedom to take it in any crazy direction I want.”

Not one to be scared by a little multi-tasking, Rob is now writing the script, and will follow this week’s release of ‘Halloween II’ – which he wrote and directed – with a new album and tour with his band, ‘White Zombie,’ and a marketing blitz for both films.

Production is scheduled for early next Spring.