Friday 7 November 2008

Never saw that coming

The pairing of Steven Spielberg and Will Smith is, of course, a no-brainer. Massive star. Massive director. I'm only surprised it hasn't happened sooner. But I never would have guessed that the project they'd connect on would be the remake of Oldboy. I love the original. I remember seeing it in Cannes and it blowing my mind. I later interviewed Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook for an extra on the UK DVD release. They've been talking about remaking it for a while now although I never really saw the point. Suddenly I'm cautiously intrigued, even though I'd rather Spielberg direct his long-mooted Lincoln project.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

**SPOILERS!!!***



**SPOILERS!!!***



will smith in Oldboy??? i will be VERY interested to see how spielberg deals with the crazy brother/sister father/daughter sexy-times. to be honest... i cannot imagine smith pulling this role off better than the original actor. but i guess we'll see. i hope spielberg goes in for the other 2 movies in the "vengeance" trilogy. if you haven't seen them, you need to.

i was going to post a link to the IMDB.com pages, but a simple search for Chan-wook Park on the page will give you the other movies: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance & Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. the movies aren't directly connected so you don't need to watch them in any order.

upon searching for "sympathy for lady vengeance" an article from March 12, 2008 comes up with Charlize Theron attached! now THAT would be good.

**SPOILERS!!!***

Anonymous said...

Please stop making Remakes

Unknown said...

you should make the same statement to the music industry. stop producing "covers"!

certainly there are movies that SHOULDN'T be re-made, but if the director feels that he can bring something unique to the vision of the original... then why not? Oldboy is a crazy cult-ish movie that a large portion of the american population knows NOTHING about (along with the rest of the vengeance trilogy as i mentioned before) and it's an AMAZING story. could it horrible? yeah. but maybe this is stevie trying something new. honstly, this movie is a LITTLE out of his usual fare. give this one a chance...

to that point, it seems that as of late there has been a lot of "talks" happening, but not many of those materializing. and really... the only movies that have been remade recently have been classic horror movies. now when someone decides to remake "don't mess with the zohan" THAT'S when i'll change my tune.

Gerard said...

Funnily enough, Schmid, I came right hear after reading of Chris Rock's announced involvement with an "urban American"-slanted remake of Death at a Funeral - the disappointing Frank Oz comedy that released LAST YEAR.

Is Hollywood so short of ideas it's now remaking English-language films which already boast a name cast and director just twelve months after their initial release?!

Unknown said...

**FAKE SPOILER**

i read somewhere that hollywood is looking to come out with "The Dark Knight Begins" instead of "The Dark Knight Returns" so as to clean the slate for a new actor to play the joker in the series moving forward. studio execs said, "people want continuity. with ledger unable to reprise his role, audiences are going to be hyper critical of anyone who comes in as the joker. BUT if we remake the entire movie with a different joker, we can effectively move the franchise forward with merely a small hiccup in the timeline. the script from the original Dark Knight will remain the same, as will the casting, with few minor changes to the joker to give the new actor a chance to put his own spin on the character."

man, i can't WAIT!

Mark Salisbury said...

Stranger things have happened.