Following his performance in Dr. Death—which took me forever to finish because the story is SUCH a nightmare, but it is very good—Joshua Jackson is signing up for a new television show, joining Lizzy Caplan in the TV remake of Fatal Attraction.
Jackson will play Dan, the Michael Douglas role. I really love this casting. Does Fatal Attraction need to be remade? No, probably not, especially not without Adrian Lyne. But Lizzy Caplan and Joshua Jackson is an interesting pairing for this project. Michael Douglas starred in Fatal Attraction at the height of his 1980s yuppie-but-bad-boy sex symbol days. But Joshua Jackson has a much more wholesome public persona, known for not only the enduring appeal of the unfailingly loyal Pacey Witter, but also as one of the internet’s favorite Wife Guys. That will probably work in his favor with his performance, he’s coming into it with audience sympathy that he is A Good Family Man, which makes Dan’s affair even more shocking and out of character.
Speaking of Adrian Lyne, though, the erotic thriller he made with Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas landed a new release, going straight to streaming. Not to like, shake my fist at clouds in the sky, but in 1987, Fatal Attraction, also directed by Lyne, was the top-grossing film of the year, worldwide, and received six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Now, Lyne’s newest film is going to Hulu. Streaming is not the death of cinema, but it does make me a little sad that the adult-oriented dramatic stuff is so thoroughly being pushed out of the communal space. It’s also troubling that we’ve gone from an erotic thriller being one of the most popular films of a decade to people legit wondering why films even bother having sex scenes. I like comic book movies as much as the next person, but it’s impossible to deny the infantilization of popular cinema over the last 30-ish years.
