Kiefer Sutherland’s character makes Flatliners remake a sequel

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A couple months ago, we learned the remake of THE CRAFT that's being developed by HONEYMOON director Leigh Janiak is actually a sequel, set twenty years after the events of the first film.

THE CRAFT was co-written by Peter Filardi, who also wrote the 1990 film FLATLINERS, which told the following story: 

At University Hospital School of Medicine, a group of ambitious medical students are about to die… and live to describe the experience.

Embarking on a daring and arrogant experiment, the five aim to push through the confines of life and touch the face of death.

In their search for knowledge, however, the five discover the chilling consequences of daring to tamper with immortality.

FLATLINERS is also getting the remake treatment, courtesy of original THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO director Niels Arden Oplev, and it appears that this remake is actually a sequel in disguise just like Janiak's THE CRAFT.

When original FLATLINERS star Kiefer Sutherland joined Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Kiersey Clemons, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Beau Mirchoff in the cast of the remake, I noted that the flm could turn out to be a sequel if the name of Sutherland's character was Nelson Wright, the name of his character in the '90 film. Well, he's not named Nelson Wright, but Sutherland told Metro that he is indeed playing the same character he played twenty-six years ago: 

I play a professor at the medical university. It is never stated but it will probably be very clearly understood that I'm the same character I was in the original Flatliners but that I have changed my name and I’ve done some things to move on from the experiments that we were doing in the original film.

I loved making the first film and when I was asked if I would be interested in taking part in this, it didn’t take more than a minute to say yes."

It's pretty interesting that two Peter Filardi movies from the '90s are both getting sequels that are being marketed as remakes.

The new FLATLINERS is being produced by Laurence Mark and Michael Douglas. SOURCE CODE'S Ben Ripley wrote the screenplay. 

The remake/sequel is scheduled to reach theatres on August 18th, 2017.