New Footloose Movie Released

The original “Footloose” movie was one of the biggest box office hits of 1984. The soundtrack produced a number of radio hits including “Let’s Hear It For The Boy,” “Almost Paradise,” and the infectuous title song.   Now after 27 years, a remake of the groundbreaking movie has been released.  It’s the true story of a big city boy from Chicago who moved to a small town in Oklahoma where dancing was against the law.   Last week, the cast and other celebrities descended on the small town of Franklin, Tennessee, located 20 miles south of Nashville, for an all-star premiere of the new movie. 

Chris Brewer directed the remake, and told reporters that it was crucial to stay true to the original movie.  “If we completely changed Footloose, people would revolt.  I passed on directing it twice, and didn’t think it should be remade.  But someone from the movie studio told me an entire generation had grown up since the original, and the movie could affect young people today in the way the original did for so many in 1984.  So I thought now may be a good time to revisit the themes and morals that were in Footloose the first time around.” 

Young actor Kenny Wormald takes on the role made famous by Kevin Bacon of Ren McCormack. “I definitely had a responsibility.  We’re all fans of the original, it was a passion project for all of us, not just a paycheck.”    Kenny is primarily known as a dancer, and gets to show his stuff in the movie: “I’ll dance to anything with a good beat, and what’s cool about Footloose is there’s four different dance scenes, they’re all different styles of dance, and we represent country music in this film too.”

The title song, originally written and performed by Kenny Loggins, was done by Blake Shelton. “They asked me to be on the soundtrack, but they wanted a female to do the title song.  I told them either I do that song or nothing.  So we went in, recorded it, and the director liked what we did.  We went to a private screening of the movie, and I thought it was awesome.  I got to know Julianne Hough when we were both on tour with George Strait.  In fact, she got the news about this movie during that tour.”

Last month, Blake shot a video for the song, and he says it was bigger than a typical video:  “I’ve done a lot of videos, but I don’t think any of them were as fun as the Footloose video.  It’s fun to watch the video and know this film is new to this generation.” 

 Blake Shelton talks more about “Footloose” when he co-hosts Country Countdown USA over the wknd of October 29-30.

Tags: footloose

Category: NEWS