As the writer’s strike stretches longer, producers might amuse themselves with ideas of movie remakes that could be produced with existing storylines and scripts in this slightly turbulent downtime. There are centuries of stories for children and numerous children’s films which could be adapted into films made interesting to adults.

One giant step would be to use a children’s script but cast adult actors, with an adult twist made specifically for a grown-up audience. Consider a children’s movie remade for adults. Could it work?

The Last Starfighter (1984) fits the bill as a children’s or teen movie that could easily be remade for an adult audience, without many script changes. This film is about a teenager, Alex, who lives in a trailer park and wants to attend college but feels hopeless about his future. Alex finds himself thrown into the center of an inter-galactic war when he is chosen to be a spaceship fighter-pilot because he plays video-games to perfection. This movie would be a great remake for adults.

Change the depth the story -- Alex is instead a cubicle-squished thirty-something office worker who still plays video-games and gets the chance to save another planet as a spaceship pilot. It might be a comedy, and probably a good one. Better yet, studios could release two versions of The Last Starfighter, one for adults and the original for kids. Two for one. Could be both a studio and an indie idea - but certainly a new idea.

There are an innumerable number of classic children’s stories that could be brought into the light of adulthood, but need story revision to appeal to adult viewers. "The Little Matchstick Girl" comes to mind because it has had several film and TV productions - so scripts exist which could be adapted, without many changes, for an adult audience. Just cast an older teen to play the matchstick girl trying to survive in modern New York. She sells whatever she can get her hands on to passersby to help her dad, a struggling inventor, to pay the rent. Add a do-gooder social worker, a handsome electrical technician, some slight-of-hand friends, a copper here and there, and the tale of old city harshness instantly transforms into a tale of a modern slum-city, but -- with a tweak to the ending -- everyone could live through the wintry holiday .

And, if the writer’s strike gets much longer maybe producers can try to remake "Little Red Riding Hood" as an episode of Desperate Housewives. Only one question remains: who will be the wolf?