Chat-boarders have been talking about this since early January, but I didn’t care about it until yesterday. The Omen (20th Century Fox), a remake of the classy 1976 horror-thriller that starred Gregory Peck, Lee Remick and David Warner, will open worldwide on an unusual day in early June — Tuesday — because the date will be 6.6.06. A clever marketing idea, and certain to strike a chord with the wack-jobbers…I’m sorry, devoted religious righties…who believe we’re approaching the End of Days. I’ve always half-liked Richard Donner‘s original, and re-doing it sounds cool, but the director, John Moore, is…I want to put this delicately so as to not to hurt Moore’s feelings, or those of his agent….a second-tier hack. (If you doubt it, compare his Flight of the Phoenix remake to the Robert Aldrich original, and re-watch Behind Enemy Lines….I mean, forget it.) Liev Schreiber has the Peck role (the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain in the Donner version), Julia Styles is playing his wife (will Moore have her repeat Lee Remick’s falling-backward-over-the-stair- bannister scene?), Mia Farrow has the evil Mrs. Baylock part (played by Billie Whitelaw in ’76), David Thewlis performs the David Warner/Jennings part (which means Thewlis’s head is going to get sliced off by a large sheet of flying glass, right?). Perhaps the creepiest element in the Donner version was Jerry Goldsmith‘s music, and it’s worth noting that Moore’s composer, Marco Beltrami, will be sampling Goldsmith’s music in his score, and particularly his “Ave Satani” composition. (The IMDB credit says Beltrami is the composer but that “themes” by Goldsmith are part of the mix.)