Apparently Hollywood isn’t happy enough ruining my generation’s childhood, so it’s now also reaching back to my dad’s. Steven Spielberg is set to direct a remake of the 1950 classic Harvey , which stars James Stewart as an alcoholic who talks to an invisible, 6½-foot-tall rabbit. Based on Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the movie kept “Harvey” the rabbit up to viewers’ (and Stewart’s) imaginations, but many are fearing that this new version will feature a computer-generated character. Because that’s how Hollywood ruins childhoods best, with CG.

But this is Spielberg we’re talking about. No stranger to remakes — he redid A Guy Named Joe as Always, gave us an updated War of the Worlds and apparently did some second-unit work on Jan De Bont’s The Haunting — he’s still a lot classier than most Hollywood directors. He may go a somewhat boring route by casting either Tom Hanks or Will Smith in the lead, but there’s no way he’d show us Harvey. I think.

Check out what the rest of the film blogosphere is saying about this news after the jump:

• Kevin Jagernauth at The Playlist is not looking forward to this remake:
  

  At his worst, Spielberg is a mawkish sentimentalist and we worry what a “modern” take will entail. Will Harvey be made real with CGI? Will Daddy issues once again rear its head and we find out that Harvey is really the ghost of Dowd’s long dead father? We shudder to think what “Harvey” will feel like with John Williams soaring strings behind. Frankly, Chase’s and Koster’s version of “Harvey” is just fine, thank you very much, and a remake, even by someone as esteemed as Spielberg is unwarranted.

• Josh Tyler at Cinema Blend really believes he’s going to pull out the rabbit:
  

  Here’s my big fear for this project: They’ll probably show the rabbit. In the 1950 version the rabbit is never seen, never put on display. Much of the movie is spent wondering whether Elwood is crazy and even when we realize he’s not, the movie lets us go right on wondering about Harvey. Much of what’s happening in the film is left up to the audiences’ imagination. That’ll never work for clumsy, modern audiences and I’d bet anything that Spielberg’s version will come complete with some ridiculous, cgi, fuzzy bunny. No thanks.

• Dan Hopper at Best Week Ever acknowledges our biggest fears regarding this project:
  

  In the remake, the rabbit will be extremely visible, horribly CGI’d, voiced by Jack Black, and will rap “Just A Friend” with a Rihanna-squirrel over the credits.

• Mark at I Watch Stuff jokes that Spielberg just wants to top another recent imaginary rabbit film:
  

  Spielberg later added, “This shit’s going to be SO fucked up, dude. Like, did you see Donnie Darko? Like that times a billion in fucked-upitude, man.”

• I have no idea what Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk is talking about here, but he’s probably got a good point anyway:
  

  Anyway, Harvey is a bit of a throwback, to the days when rabbits just hung out with you and wore bow ties and went to the theater.  Nowadays, invisible anthropomorphic animals spend most of their time telling you to do drugs and kill the president.  It’s like, leave me alone, llama, can’t you see I’m trying to snort this PCP?

• Helen O’Hara at The Empire Blog wonders how Harvey will be updated:
  

  Rather than joking about CG rabbits, in fact, I think the main challenge here is going to be updating the tone of the story to the modern day, because we live in a more cynical world with less of the tolerance for human foibles that made the original so likeable. Tell people you see a giant rabbit in 2009 and you might get a guest spot on Jeremy Kyle (well, if your brother sleeps with it anyway) or Dr Phil, but you’re unlikely to be kindly tolerated by neighbours who know you well and like you for your foibles as well as in spite of them.  Even in a small-town local, the drunk who claims to have a giant rabbit for a friend would provoke comment, I suspect. In that sense, Spielberg would do better to cast a Sam Rockwell or a Phillip Seymour Hoffman or someone like that, rather than a Hanks or a Will Smith who will have people screaming about sentimentality before anyone’s seen so much as a frame.

• Devin Faraci at CHUD.com is more concerned for Spielberg’s career than the beloved original film:
  

  Look, the original play and the original brilliant film, starring Jimmy Stewart, will remain. There was a remake starring Harry Anderson and it did nothing to mar the original’s sheen. But what could be marred here is Spielberg’s filmography, already an oeuvre marked by latter day brilliance intercut with pandering tripe.

• Noel Murray at A.V. Club wishes Spielberg was instead directing any number of other projects he’s been attached to:
  

  Spielberg’s name has been attached to a number of projects over the past year…Whatever the reason for Spielberg’s decision to shift gears and redo a beloved Hollywood classic (something he’s not had much success with in the past), it can’t help but feel like something of a letdown, compared with what he could be doing.

• Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere uses this opportunity to tell Spielberg he should let some other projects go:
  

  I say and plead again to Spielberg: do the decent thing and drop Lincoln and give it to someone else to direct. Someone who isn’t afraid, someone with more depth and passion. Go ahead and be the life-loving Tintin/Harvey hah-hey guy. Shallow it up to your heart’s content but don’t block a potentially great film from being made. Lincoln is beyond your abilities. Admit this and let it go.

• Cole Abaius at Film School Rejects believes it’s going to be hard for an actor to fill Stewart’s shoes:
  

  There’s no doubt that Spielberg will make a great movie. It’s Spielberg. But my biggest concern, and probably the biggest hurdle of the film will be casting the main role. I realize that most people that see it might not have seen the original, but for those that have, it’ll be impossible to get Stewart’s portrayal out of their minds. It’s going to take an incredible actor or actress to overcome that obstacle.

• Dustin Rowles at Pajiba is actually intrigued by the project and thinks Hanks is good for it:
  

  It’s got a certain Lars and the Real Girl quality to it. A novelist, Jonathan Tropper (The Book of Joe) has written the adaptation. No one has been cast yet, but if Ron Howard doesn’t steal him away first, this is actually a perfect role for Tom Hanks (and, barring that, the dramatic actor version of Jim Carrey).

• Krystal Clark at ScreenCrave wants Hanks more than Smith for the lead:
  

  I think both Smith and Hanks would be good choices, but I think Hanks might be able to pull off the eccentric quality of Harvey without it being too funny or over the top. It makes me think of his performance in Big. Smith might come off as a bit too comedic and you might lose the heart of the character in the midst of that.

• Niall Browne at ScreenRant would rather see Spielberg go with a less predictable choice for lead:
  

  Personally, I’d like Spielberg to try something different.

  Maybe he could return to his old buddy Dreyfuss to star as Dowd, or cast Kevin Costner - another actor with a style similar to Stewart. Costner and Spielberg previously worked together on a Spielberg-directed episode of Amazing Stories. I feel that hiring Hanks would be lazy and safe casting and (as I said) I’d like this film to offer something different.

• Adam Rosenberg at MTV Movies Blog has another actor in mind:
  

  Personally, I’d like to see Spielberg turn to someone different for a change. Specifically, George Clooney…Where Hanks is a “safe” bet for Spielberg’s Stewart stand-in, I feel like Clooney could really re-invent the role. He plays the eccentric very well, and the inescapable aura of “cool” that he exudes could be just the thing to keep “Harvey” relevant for modern audiences.

• Wookie Johnson at ScreenJunkies wants someone crazy to be typecast:
  

  No word yet on casting or the unnecessary special effects that will bastardize this remake but let’s see, who in Hollywood could pull off a protagonist who sees things that may or may not be there? Joaquin Pheonix, put down your microphone and dookie gold ropes. Steven Spielberg needs you.

• Lane Brown at Vulture hopes Spielberg doesn’t cast his new favorite actor:
  

  …presumably he knows that somebody already made a perfectly good Jimmy Stewart–starring movie based on Harvey back in 1950, so don’t expect your pointing that out to change his mind. Also, if Spielberg insists on casting Shia LaBeouf in this one, here’s hoping he plays the unseen bunny.

• Kyle Buchanan at Movieline actually roots for Tom Cruise in a list of potential stars:
  

  …the option that we think is so crazy it just might work (literally) is Tom Cruise. His unshakable insistence on behalf of the Church of Scientology has already branded him a true believer amidst a sea of smirking skeptics. Would Cruise’s Elwood politely brand disbelieving doctors “glib”? We already know his thought on psychiatry mesh perfectly, if perhaps more vehemently, with the character’s. Sign him up, Steve!

• Finally, Anne Thompson at the new indieWIRE-hosted Thompson on Hollywood (or, TOH!) ties the Spielberg news to a general post addressing studios playing it safe with talented filmmakers:
  

  We know that books, plays, tv shows, videogames, theme park rides, comics and graphic novels are easier to make than anything original. (The Independent rounds up some of the studios’ recent franchise-chasing activity.) But these are Hollywood’s best and brightest, the directors who can usually get anything made. But not if the studios don’t give them the money.