Following hot on the heels of Footloose, the remake of which hits cinema screens next year, it was today announced that Dirty Dancing is to get the makeover treatment.
The original film, in which a young debutante rebels against her father by starting a relationship with a dance instructor during a summer holiday, made a star of Patrick Swayze as the loose-limbed Johnny Castle. Jennifer Grey never quite escaped the shadow of Frances "Baby" Houseman, however.
Dirty Dancing scored massive box-office success in 1987, making more than $200m (£120m) worldwide from a $5m budget. It also became the first film ever to sell a million copies on video and won several Golden Globes. A stage version is still playing packing them in in the West End, so the remake could prove a potential cash cow for Lionsgate, which is developing it from a script by Julia Dahl, writer of the 2003 Brittany Murphy comedy Uptown Girls.
No word yet as to the cast, or whether High School Musical director Kenny Ortega, who found early success as a choreographer on the original movie, and has been roped in for Footloose, might be persuaded to return. It was he who oversaw Dirty Dancing's famous finale, described by the Observer's Polly Vernon as "the most goosebump-inducing dance scene in movie history". The studio will also do well to note the travails of ill-fated 2004 sequel Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, which failed to repeat the success of its predecessor.
