Chopping Mall is known for three things: killer robots, an exploding head, and killer robots. Jim Wynorski’s original 1986 mall massacre film was originally called Killbots. The upcoming Chopping Mall reboot is taking the androids out of the picture. The director thinks killer robots are silly in the tech age, where AI movies come and go virtually unnoticed.
“Sorry guys… purists. I have a different take,” director Robert Hall, who make Laid To Rest told Nightmare Toys, via Bloody Disgusting. His version of Chopping Mall will be “totally supernatural.”
He went on to say “it’s more The Fog set in an abandoned mall than it is robots”.
“Instead of killer robots, they are these mannequins that are possessed by the souls of dead slaves that worked at the plantation that the mall was built over,” Hall explained. The change was given the seal of approval from legendary producer Roger Corman, although he’s not really sure if he can actually make the remake because the rights are in some as-yet-undetermined state, which could also be another reason to dump the killbots. The only thing that’s stopped Hall before was budgets.
Three security robots face off against eight teens at the Park Plaza Mall in the original film. To be fair, the kids did break into a store and steal guns and gasoline, and the robots could technically be excused. They even rebooted HAL in the 2001: A Space Odyssey remake 2010.
More as we hear it…