Chan-Wook Park’s Oldboy (2003) is one of those foreign films that so many people have already seen that a remake would almost be sacrilege, but in the eyes of studio execs, people who watch foreign films aren’t an audience worth considering anyway so shut up while Kevin James takes a gorilla ice skating. Last we heard, a deal that would’ve had Spielberg and Will Smith involved in the remake fell through when Dreamworks and Mandate couldn’t come to an agreement. But Mandate apparently still owns the rights to the remake, and now Twitch reports that they’re in talks with Spike Lee to direct. Yes, Spike Lee. I for one can’t wait for ODay Sioux’s inevitable out-of-context rant about how much he hates Arab cab drivers.
Twitch has learned that Spike Lee is currently in talks to direct the long-rumored Hollywood remake of Park Chan-Wook´s Oldboy.
The film is set up at Mandate with Doug Davison and Roy Lee producing and Mark Protosevich (Thor, I Am Legend) writing the script.
The original starred the brilliant Min-Sik Choi as Oh Dae-Su, a man with five days to find and exact his revenge on the man who imprisoned him for 15 years. Whether a straight remake or a new adaptation of the original manga, I imagine Spike Lee’s version would play out much the same way. “Oldboy 2: Who you callin’ ‘Boy?”” they could call it.