But can he sweat like Joe Spinell?

Deadline reports that Wood (who, if you'll remember, played an eerily silent cannibal in SIN CITY) has signed to star in Franck Khalfoun's (P2) redux of the William Lustig classic, to be produced by HIGH TENSION's Alexandre Aja. The updated version sees the LORD OF THE RINGS actor "play the role of a serial killer who works at a shop that sells antique mannequins. He finds victims on the internet and stalks them like prey, all the while suffering from hallucinations that throw him back into the past, when he was abused by his own mother. In his twisted mind, he gains a measure of revenge against his mother with each kill."

Sounds pretty faithful to the original, just augmented for present day. Of course, with the current financial situation of the country and many of its citizens, it may be possible to find some of that old New York City grime. I'm fairly certain it's simply just shifted to around West 33rd, between 6th and 7th ave. 

When I spoke to Lustig last year, he shared a similar sentiment. Here's what he had to say regarding the contrast of times: 

“Funny enough—I live in New York, and because of the recession, I’m seeing a lot of ’70s New York creeping up into our surroundings. In particular, I’m seeing a lot of abandoned stores, a lot of ‘For Rent’ signs, a lot more homeless people. I also get the sense that crime is on the rise. So I’m starting to sense a lot of the elements that I had seen back in ’70s New York. Next year they’re going to be cutting back police, and God knows what’s going to happen. What do you think is going to happen?

“When you have all these abandoned stores,” he continues, “you’re going to maybe start to see more porno shops in neighborhoods you didn’t seem them in before, because those are the places that people…everyone’s got to rent their stores, and if they’re not going to rent it to a shoe store, they’re going to rent it to whoever’s got money. So I believe you’re going to start to see sleaze come back. You’re going to see a lot more prostitution, all these things that are products of recession periods.

“A lot of what you see in MANIAC still exists today,” he adds. “I was standing on 23rd Street just yesterday, in front of one of the buildings we shot the exterior of, and I remembered the subway station—not the interior, but where the girl went down the steps—was on the corner of 23rd and 7th, and it’s still there. And there was the street where Spinell stopped the nurse, and I remember shooting that on 22nd Street. With maybe one or two exceptions, you could really shoot the movie [again] in the same locations. But what I’ve been told is the plan for the MANIAC remake is to shoot a week or so in New York, and the rest of it in Montreal.”

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