Hollywood loves the remake, but sadly thy usually choose, from an artistic perspective, the movie to remake. The number crunchers in charge of the studios usually select what needs to be remade based on two criteria, is it a property that they currently own but is not making them money and two that has a built in base of fans who might be separated from their cash.

The problem with the built in base of fans is that movies are not like cars, newer models are not what people want. They love their old classic movies for what they are and remakes usually upset the fans who then go out and bad talk your newest attempt at the same story.

I would argue the best choice is to find a property that a studio holds, that has fallen into obscurity and turn it into something relevant to the times. Here’s one such film and how I think you could update it.

The 27th Day is a novel and SF film about aliens and humanity’s capacity for self-destruction. Writen, produced, and released during the Cold War, the plot revolves around five people who have been scooped up by aliens. The aliens inform our characters that the alien homeworld is dying and they have selected Earth as their new home. Galactic law forbids just moving in and killing off the current residents, so the aliens give each person a very, very high tech capsule that can be used to destroy all human life for a radius of thousands of miles around a target, specified by the user. The five people have the combined ability to eliminate all human life on the planet. (Animals and plants are unaffected.) The weapons will become inert after 27 days, but given humanity’s violent and deadly nature the aliens are betting we can’t go the distance. There are more details in how the magical devices work and the film has a mildly interesting twist that doesn’t work as well as the novel’s. (Strangely enough screenplay and novel were written by the same fellow, but who know what other fingers mucked around in the writing.)

This nearly forgotten film would be perfect for a modern remake. instead of focusing on the Cold War and nuclear annihilation a remake could focus on environmental issues and an ex-planetary judgment that we are poor caretakers of our world and perhaps if we killed ourselves off quickly the planet could be given to a more deserving bunch. (this is not to say that is a theme I hold as true, but it would work as a powerful theme to drive the plotting and characters.)