Thesis: Alejandro Amenabar’s 1996 thriller is getting an English-language remake

Last year, it was announced that Sentient Entertainment is teaming up with Universal Pictures to produce a “modernized” remake of writer/director Alejandro Amenábar’s 2001 haunted house movie The Others. Now Sentient Entertainment has revealed that they’re also working on an English-language remake of Amenábar’s 1996 Spanish thriller Thesis (a.k.a. Tesis, buy it HERE). Given how much positive attention Thesis got when it was released, it’s surprising we didn’t already get an English-language remake of it years ago.

Sentient acquired the Thesis rights from FilmSharks’ The Remake Co. and Enrique Cerezo’s VideoMercury in “a highly competitive bidding war”. The company’s Renee Tab and Christopher Tuffin will be producing the remake with FilmSharks CEO Guido Rud and Aliwen Entertainment’s Lucas Akoskin. Cerezo will serve as executive producer. Now they just need a writer and director.

Thesis starred Ana Torrent as

Ángela, a student writing a thesis about violence, who comes upon a snuff video where a girl is tortured to death, soon discovering that the victim was an alumna of her school.

Renee Tab had this to say about the remake:

Amenabar was ahead of his time in making Thesis. Our culture has become more fascinated and obsessed with sex and violence than ever. The desensitization of violence in the media has reached an all-time high and to devastating effect. Through a university campus experience, we want to tell the next generation’s story as authentic as possible, touching on what students today are feeling and suffering in accordance with mental health and the pressures ahead of them. All of this is hidden in a great investigative thriller.”

The remakes of The Others and Thesis follow in the footsteps of Cameron Crowe’s Vanilla Sky, which was a remake of Amenábar’s Spanish film Open Your Eyes (Abre Los Ojos). Vanilla Sky is one of my favorite movies, so I don’t expect these remakes to turn out as well as that one did, but hopefully they’ll be good.

Amenábar has also directed The Sea Inside, Agora, Regression, and While at War.