First Images of STRAW DOGS Starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, and Alexander Skarsgård

Screen Gems has released the first images from Straw Dogs, a remake of the 1971 thriller directed by Sam Peckinpah.  James Marsden and Kate Bosworth fill in for Dustin Hoffman and Susan George as the Sumners, “a husband and wife who clash with sadistic small-town Mississippi locals.”  Alexander Skarsgård, Rhys Coiro, James Woods, Laz Alonso, Dominic Purcell, and Walton Goggins also star.

Writer/director Rod Lurie (Nothing But the Truth) recognizes the trickiness in redoing Peckinpah, but the remake doesn’t try to soften the brutal impact of the rape-filled original:

“It’s a fool’s errand to try to outdo Peckinpah on his turf… This is not a soft movie.  People leave this movie saying they need a drink.”

See the images after the jump.

The images were scanned from the print version of Entertainment Weekly.  Straw Dogs is schedule for release on September 16, so the studio will likely release higher quality images online soon, hopefully accompanied by a trailer.

Here’s the synopsis for the original Straw Dogs, which was loosely based on the novel The Siege of Trencher’s Farm by Gordon Williams:

To avoid the Vietnam-era social chaos in the U.S., American mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his British wife, Amy (Susan George), to the isolated Cornish town where she grew up, but their presence provokes antagonism among the village’s men. As the hostilities escalate from routine bullying to the gang rape of his wife, David finds his pacifistic self backed into a corner. When the hooligans attack his house, David finally resorts to the gruesome violence that he abhors. [Fandango]