Backlash Over ‘Single White Female’ Remake Casting

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Social media is a very predictable place to visit, and there are often movie announcements that really don’t need anyone to check what reaction they are receiving in the world of keyboard warriors and overly opinionated commentators. The news that ‘90s thriller
is being remade with Wednesday star
and Bones and All’s Taylor Russell in talks to lead. With a Latinx actress and an actress of Jamaican descent in line to headline the feature, social media obviously is going to point out the reason why the idea of this being a remake has a flaw that is hard to ignore these days when race is still one of the first things anyone talks about.

Single White Female was originally released in 1992, during the peak era for erotic psychological thrillers such as Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, and starred Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The film, based on the 1990 novel, SWF Seeks Same by John Lutz, focused on a woman (Fonda) who breaks up with her boyfriend and decides to rent out a room in her apartment. Soon after taking in a tenant (Leigh), she reconciles with her lover, leading to some unsettling changes in her new lodger. The movie was a box office success, but in the grand scheme of things, it isn’t a movie that people tend to remember without a little push.

Naturally, this is being seen as a new adaptation of the original novel rather than a remake (as Hollywood tries to get away from using the immediately divisive term “remake” in favor of “reimagining”), but users on social media have been quick to point out the flaws in the title based on the casting choices. One user immediately jumped in (a little off the mark), “Correction to the title of movie: Single “Hispanic” Female.”

Remaking ‘Single While Female’ Just Seems to Be Social Media Bating

Remaking or rebooting – or reimagining if you must – a popular IP is understandable as Hollywood attempts to wring out every last penny from the properties that people are always talking about. Remaking, what effectively, if a run-of-the-mill 30-year-old thriller seems like a bizarre choice even before anyone mentioned possible casting decisions. Even making another version of the novel, when there are thousands of similar thriller novels that have never been adapted, is questionable when there is not much different to be done with the story. Throw in the casting of two incredible actresses who are not white, and it seems like it is just set up to cause social media outrage.

Comments have been expected mixed, and although there are plenty to be found on X/Twitter that we would not want to repeat, some of the more contained ones include:

“You know you are free to create a new story about single female roommates without doing a reboot,”

This film was a timeless masterpiece, but I don’t think another version should be made as a tribute. Instead, let’s take the central ideas of this movie – themes like obsession, impersonation, and manipulation – and use them in a fresh, innovative way. There’s no need to re-create this movie.

For many other people, the issue has nothing to do with the heritage of the stars, but the fact that Hollywood’s obsession with remakes is just lining up actors for a lot of unnecessary challenges when coming up against the backlash of fans of the original movies. While Hollywood is brimming with talented actors and actresses, there seems to be an increasing lack of creatives who have the ability – or the studio backing – to develop new stories that do not rely on those that have gone before.

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2025-03-15 16:33