That's right. The fourth version.

I tend to believe that ranting against remake's is a losers game. Hollywood makes them because (1) often the studio already owns the earlier script or subject matter; (2) the story usually proved a hit the first time and (3) with the right new players, their modern fans will come out (see: "The Longest Yard.")

Still. Nicole Kidman is an Oscar-winning actress who has somewhat of a record for bankability. (Fading fast? See: Bewitched.)

With all the script pitches made to Ms. Kidman's agents, and then passed on to her, what exactly possessed her to believe that this was the one worth choosing over all the others available at the time? The FOURTH remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Is there anyone over the age of say, 13, who doesn't already know the plot, start to almost-finish (because in some versions, we win, and in some versions, we lose.)

As an entry-level matter, I figure that the money was really, really good for "The Invasion." Thus can Ms. Kidman charge near-scale for indies like "Birth." (See also: "Bewitched.")

But it just seems a bit of a waste. Only so many movies get greenlights. All three versions of "Invasion" are rentable and play TV from time to time.

I post this before the weekend opening. I guess we'll see if there is an audience for a fourth one, and in any event, Ms. Kidman already got paid. That's what its all about.

P.S. They were filming scenes for this movie in D.C. almost two years ago. A bad sign.

Where you making a pun here? The invasion of her body started when she decided to make this movie!

Uh, yes, exactly! A pun.

Oh, to be as sharp as I seem to be but am not. Perhaps, I was possessed.

I think that's what possessed Kidman to take the role. She's a psychiatrist - the most hated and despised profession in all of $cientology. What better way to send a dig at the pod people that drove her away from Cruise and who are now trying to take over her children, just like in the movie?

That's certainly possible, with the chaser of that mega-paycheck.

In any event, "The Invasion" massively tanked (less than $6 million opening weekend on a budget anywhere from $70 to $100 million, you know how Hollywood does those things.) Kidman's heroic shrink was seen by practically no one.

For practically no one wanted to see this thing for the fourth time.

You have to figure the producers knew that going in. I smell some sort of investment scam.

Now, this begins its journey into "cable TV hell" -- where you pass it on the dial, think "Oh, yeah this is the Kidman Body Snatchers"...and immediately chose something else.

Daniel Craig's James Bond heat didn't work for this, either -- Pierce Brosnan must be having a good laugh.

. . . aside from his being Bond (the best since Connery, I might add), Craig, to most Americans, is still "that British guy" to a lotta folks. It took Clive Owen a while to make his way into our consciousness (and he's still sort of a specialized taste, though I adore him); Hugh Grant only made the leap when he became a romantic comedy star. People still go, "Who?" when I tell them my wife says I resemble Jason Statham.

Notice that Craig doesn't even bear mention in most of the TV ads.

So Brosnan--who arguably gained his true recognizability not through Bond, but by way of Remington Steele--would have little reason to laugh (unless he's re-watching The Matador, which is hilarious).

Well, Daniel Craig did get full "poster presence" with Kidman, in a quite-legitmate attempt, I believe, to try to sell this dead-on-arrival movie as having James Bond in it.

I suppose I made made my Pierce Brosnan reference because the critical world seemed to rapidly shunt Brosnan and his Bond aside in favor of the "different" Craig. (Brosnan held the title as "second best Bond" in recent years.) But star-making machinery is tricky; clearly, Craig had no star power to save "The Invasion."

James Bond launched only one true movie star. The first one: Sean Connery. This is because, I believe, he was a true movie star ready to go when they hired him. Thereafter, the hires were "damaged goods": a male model (George Lazenby), a TV actor of many years (Roger Moore of "The Saint" and "Maverick" and "The Persuaders"), a handsome third-tier British movie star who had not made it in almost 20 years on screen (Timothy Dalton) ; and, indeed, "Remington Steele" -- Brosnan, who came the closest other than Connery to launching a stand-alone movie star career, and may yet pull it off (he's making "Mamma Mia" with Meryl Streep right now.)

Meanwhile, other major stars or stars-to-be turned down Bond in the post-Connery years: Paul Newman, Burt Reynolds, Mel Gibson...Clive Owen. During those same years, minor-leaguers like John Gavin and James Brolin tried to get the role (Gavin had it until Connery decided to return for "Diamonds Are Forever" after all.)

Daniel Craig has about a decade of Bondage ahead of him; we'll see if he sustains stardom aside from it. Other than for Sean Connery, James Bond just hasn't been that kind of role. And as one critic wrote, that's likely because Sean Connery would have become a star anyway, even if he wasn't cast as Bond. He was that hot in the early sixties.

. . . Layer Cake, Love is the Devil, The Mother, and others, I don't know that he "needed" to hitch himself to the Bond Franchise to create or even catalyze his stardom. Of course, that may be my own arthouse prejudices talking.

Brosnan is a fine actor, and I think he was the second-best Bond prior to Craig (though most of his Bond movies are bottom tier, as such things go), but I think he's pretty much stuck with third-best now, unless Craig manages to lose something, rather than gain something, in future performances of the role. We'll see.

What constitutes a "movie star" is one of those things that has caught my fancy over the years, having watched a lot of movies in my time. Minor stars don't much matter, but major ones influence millions of people, often years after they're dead (John Wayne and Steve McQueen are still hugely influential today.) When the studios created and nurtured them , and put them in consistent quality productions, they emerged well over time (usually after about a decade of lower-tier training): Bogart, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Gary Cooper. Modernly, in the era of summer blockbusters and indiefilm, its a lto harder to make a star. Daniel Craig has been consistently compellng in the films you mention, but indeed, they do little for "international bankability." My understanding is that, in recent year,s the bankable male stars for a teen-male driven audience are the "goofy guys": Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Mike Myers, Steve Carrell, etc. Those actors who have tried to maintain "serious leading man" careers -- perhaps starting with Russell Crowe about ten years ago -- have had a rougher road to hoe. Most of George Clooney's movies aren't big moneymakers. James Bond movies have been a bit of a creative ghetto for decades. People forget: the series basically ended and closed up shop for six years (between Dalton and Brosnan) and almost didn't come back. Craig and "Casino Royale" have rejuvenated the creaky old vehicle. Craig may become a big bankable star, or not. But Bond will pay him well and he can act in indies for the rest of his life. Things changed, movie star-wise.

One article reports that "The Invasion" got Nicole Kidman in it because she got $17 million for it.

For that, she's probably make the 18th version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

Hell, I would have done it for $500,000, in a wig.

Yeah, me too.

I've been thinking a bit about remakes, only because in the theatre, nearly everything we do is a remake, and no one bats an eye. I wonder if we sometimes over-ponder the necessity of remakes, thus blinding ourselves to the more relevant question of the quality of any given remake.

Personally, my favorite version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the Philip Kaufman flick from the '70s, with Donald Sutherland and Karen Allen.