Lollipop Chainsaw is getting a remake (opens in new tab) if you somehow haven’t heard my incessant yelling about its return for the past few weeks. The original is a bombastic, colourful zombie-sawing action game packed with witty dialogue co-written by James Gunn back when he was just “the Scooby-Doo guy” and not “the Marvel guy.”
Unfortunately, any hopes of Gunn making a return to freshen up and add new dialogue have been dashed by the man himself. “Neither I nor Suda 51 are currently involved in this,” he tweeted in response to an article written about the remake. “I heard about it for the first time from Suda a couple weeks ago.”
He followed up by saying “I neither endorse nor condemn it! I simply don’t know anything about it. But as articles are starting to slap our names on there, I think it’s important to make clear no one ever approached us about it.”
To answer the question in the article, neither I nor @suda_51 are currently involved in this. I heard about it for the first time from Suda a couple weeks ago. https://t.co/hc659ROwXQJuly 5, 2022
Suda, who co-wrote Lollipop Chainsaw with Gunn and oversaw the game as creative director, also chimed in (opens in new tab) to confirm that neither of them is involved. “To add my two cents, like James Gunn says, neither he nor I am involved in this project at all, and Grasshopper Manufacture has nothing to do with development or anything.”
Although Yoshimi Yasuda said that some of the original development team are working on the remake, it feels like a huge oversight to have the two biggest creative forces behind the original left out of the loop. They’re not the only two either—Tara Strong, the English voice of protagonist Juliet Starling, replied to Gunn’s tweet (opens in new tab) to add that she also has no involvement in the remake.
It does make me worry slightly about what this remake is going to be. We already know the majority of the licensed music is getting dropped and Yasuda said the game will have “a more realistic approach to graphics,” which seems like a weird thing to say for such a heavily stylised game. With no Gunn, no Suda and not even Strong’s iconic voice lending a hand to this remake, I’m curious and a little frightened to see what a modern-day Lollipop Chainsaw looks like.