After teasing horror fans with a December 2019 horror release, Blumhouse announced today that they plan on remaking BLACK CHRISTMAS for a December 13th, 2019 release date. Yes that is a Friday by the way. If you haven’t seen the original, you need to. No, not the 2006 remake, but the original Black Christmas from 1974 starring Olivia Hussey and directed by Bob Clark who would later go on to direct A Christmas Story and Porky’s among other titles.

Blumhouse, who has seen success in creating lucrative interest in the Halloween franchise, hopes to turn their retro horror sites on another genre classic for today’s audiences.  The original focused on a sorority house who’s sleepy Christmas break is disrupted by an escaped psychopath. However, the updated storyline looks to empower the female protagonists as described in the synopsis below.

Synopsis: Hawthorne College is quieting down for the holidays. One by one, sorority girls on campus are being killed by an unknown stalker. But the killer is about to discover that this generation’s young women aren’t willing to become hapless victims as they mount a fight to the finish.

No trailer yet but here is the one sheet.

This December, on Friday the 13th, ring in the holidays by dreaming of a Black Christmas.

Interesting too is the choice to hire a female writer and a female director to tell the story now. Sophia Takal (Always Shine) will direct from the script she wrote with April Wolfe (Widower). Let’s hope that they are able to capture the frigid claustrophobia of the original while giving the much needed strength to the women in the story. To that end, Imogen Poots (Green Room, The Art of Defense), Aleyse Shannon (Charmed), Brittany O’Grady (Star), Lily Donoghue (The Goldbergs, Jane the Virgin) and Caleb Eberhardt (Broadway’s Choir Boy) will star.

Black Christmas is produced by Jason Blum (Halloween, Split) for his Blumhouse Productions, by Ben Cosgrove (The Good German, Rumor Has It) and by Adam Hendricks (Cam, Bloodline, Lucky) for Divide/Conquer. Hendricks’ partners in Divide/Conquer, Greg Gilreath (Cam, Bloodline) and Zac Locke (Adopt-A-Highway, Bloodline), will executive produce.