An Arachno­pho­bia remake is in the works cour­tesy of James Wan

The hit 1990 hor­ror-com­e­dy Arachno­pho­bia is set for a remake cour­tesy of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Enter­tain­ment and Atom­ic Mon­ster, the pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny found­ed by Saw and Insid­i­ous direc­tor James Wan.

The orig­i­nal stars John Good­man and Jeff Daniels who, fol­low­ing the acci­den­tal trans­porta­tion of a new­ly dis­cov­ered Venezue­lan spi­der to a small Amer­i­can town, attempt to stop a dead­ly hybrid species from killing every­one in it. Arach­nid-based chaos ensues, with wine-fuelled fights with spi­der gen­er­als aplenty.

Arachno­pho­bia received a large amount of crit­i­cal praise, despite protests from a minor­i­ty who believed the film it tar­nished the pub­lic image of spi­ders. The film went on to gross over $50m and gained a wide cult following.

As report­ed by Dead­line, the project is still in the ear­ly stages of devel­op­ment, with no writer or direc­tor yet attached. The direc­tor of the orig­i­nal, Frank Mar­shall, will serve as an exec­u­tive pro­duc­er, a job role he has also held on both the Indi­ana Jones and Juras­sic Park franchises.

With Wan’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny at the helm along­side Amblin, it is like­ly that the Aus­tralian film­mak­er will take on a role as pro­duc­er, but hav­ing only just fin­ished Aqua­man he is not in line to direct. Hav­ing made his name in hor­ror, it will be inter­est­ing to see if Wan puts his own spin on the sto­ry or stick to the ​“Thrill-ome­dy” (yes, it was real­ly mar­ket­ed as such) tone of the first film.

Arachno­pho­bia did for spi­ders what It did for clowns and Jaws for sharks, and giv­en the stan­dards of both prac­ti­cal effects and CGI in the indus­try nowa­days, we’re hop­ing the remake’s eight-legged antag­o­nists will be even more terrifying.