Basic Instinct has a reboot in the works, will it be as controversial as the original?

Watch out for ice pick-wielding murderers, people, erotic thriller Basic Instinct is getting a reboot.

Curiously, the new version is going to come from the same screenwriter as the original, Joe Eszterhas, who reportedly sold the project to Amazon MGM for $US2 million with a possible $US4 million if it gets made, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Eszterhas may, ultimately, replicate his blockbuster payday from the 1992 film starring Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas. He said he was paid $US4 million, a quarter of which he passed onto to producer Irwin Winkler.

It’s not completely unheard of for a scribe to be involved with multiple iterations of the same property (Russell T. Davies wrote the 2005 reboot of Doctor Who and then returned to do it again in 2023), but it is unusual.

Often, a reboot is supposed to be an updated take that reflects the current culture, which is not to say Eszterhas, 80, isn’t swimming with fresh ideas. A prolific screenwriter of the 1980s and 1990s, he penned several big ticket movies including Flashdance and Showgirls, and was among the highest-paid in Hollywood.

He wrote Basic Instinct in two weeks, and based the two main characters on people he had known as a younger man.

One was a police officer friend with whom he was acquainted when the writer was a newspaper journalist. He told The AV Club that he saw a “homicidal impulse thrill-seeking” in his former friend, that the cop had been involved in three shootings and “in my personal judgment, he liked it too much”.

The other was a woman he had dated who was 10 years his senior, that she was “kind of omnisexual and used sex in diabolical but very enjoyable ways”.

Directed by Paul Verhoeven, Basic Instinct was both hugely controversial and a massive commercial success. With a global box office of $US352 million, it was fourth highest grossing movie of the year worldwide. In Australia, it was second behind Strictly Ballroom.

The story is centred on Nick (Douglas), a police detective investigating the brutal murder of a rock star, and his suspicion soon falls on the victim’s casual girlfriend, a writer named Catherine (Stone).

The two predators engage in a dangerous game as they try to outsmart each other, while it’s also clear that Nick is extremely desirous of Catherine.

The film’s most famous scene, the interrogation in which Catherine exposes her genital area to off-kilter the police, has been referenced over and over again throughout pop culture in the past three decades.

In her 2021 memoirs, Stone recalled that she was manipulated into it, that she had not consented to being filmed without her underwear but Verhoeven insisted that she remove her white-coloured panties because it was reflecting the light, and that the camera wouldn’t be able to see anything.

When she saw a screening of the film, surrounded by agents and lawyers, and saw her naked genitals on the screen, she marched up to the projection booth and slapped Verhoeven in the face.

She recounted her lawyer told her she would be able to secure an injunction, but Verhoeven insisted she had no options. Ultimately, she allowed it to be shown because she decided it was the correct choice for the film and the character, but that she resented that she had, essentially, been forced into it.

Verhoeven responded that his memory of the situation was “radically different” but went on to praise Stone for her work in the role as “absolutely phenomenal”.

Stone had been working since 1980, and had appeared in a previous Verhoeven film, Total Recall, but Basic Instinct was her breakout role and her star rose meteorically after its release.

But she wasn’t the first, second, third or even 10th choice for the role. Douglas had initially declined to screen test with Stone because he wanted another A-lister to share the burden of what he correctly predicted would be a swath of controversies attached to the film.

Stone was only offered the part after 12 other actors declined, including Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Kim Basinger, Julia Roberts, Greta Scacchi and Geena Davis.

Stone said of the project, “I can say that the role was, by far, the most stretching that I had ever done in terms of considering the dark side of myself.

“It was terrifying. I had walked in my sleep three times during the production, twice waking fully dressed in my car in my garage. I had hideous nightmares.”

Stone was paid $US500,000 for the role while Douglas pocketed $US14 million.

The production was picketed by protestors during filming and at the premiere. Among the objections was from the LGBTQI community who was incensed that a bisexual character was being portrayed as a murderous sociopath.

Eszterhas recalled that he heard Verhoeven had been so paranoid about the protestors, he had sandbagged his house out of fear they would target his home.

The film’s line producer, Alan Marshall, who may or may not be the same unnamed line producer Stone said intentionally called her “Karen” throughout the entire process, had made “citizen’s arrests” of protestors and walked them over to police cars, but the officers declined to arrest or charge any of them.

One scene that was controversial at the time and perhaps even more so today is a sexual encounter between Douglas’s Nick and Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Dr Beth Garner. It starts off as consensual sex but then becomes non-consensual as Nick’s behaviour escalates.

In that 2022 AV Club interview, Eszterhas argued that scene was not date rape, just that it was “rough”. He added, “In my estimation of today’s climate it would be very, very difficult for that kind of rawness of that scene in the script”.

This may be something he should think about updating with his reboot screenplay.

Basic Instinct is streaming on Stan, Prime Video and Binge