This summer, highly secretive reshoots for the new Casablanca remake have begun at Blackbushe Airport, which will presumably host the iconic closing sequence in which Rick lets Ilsa escape from Casablanca by plane. Denis Villeneuve is credited as the movie’s director, with Oscar Isaac as the revolutionary, Laszlo. Meanwhile, the movie features celebrity sweethearts Timothée Chalamet as Rick, and Zendaya as Ilsa, who, I’m sure, will capture Bogart and Bergman’s electric onscreen chemistry – and with such a Dune-studded cast, perhaps “We’ll always have Arrakis!” is a more fitting line to describe this picture.
Filming had already proved problematic with Zendaya’s watertight contract requiring her face to be in full colour glory, resulting in an avant-garde approach to filmmaking where everything but the A-list star will be black and white. Which comes as good news to supposed ‘Film students’ who’ll read way too into it. Giving this daring remake its edge is Donald Glover (known as rapper Childish Gambino), who’s playing piano player Sam, bringing with him a modern R&B rearrangement of ‘As Time Goes By’, performed live on set with his MIDI drum pad keyboard.
We’d love to hear from you what you think about Casablanca (2027). Have remakes gone too far? Is this the beginning of a beautiful film, or a catastrophic creative and box-office mistake?
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