Warner Brothers has acquired the rights to Chan-Wook’s Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, the first film in his revenge trilogy, which also includes Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, in that order. Oldboy almost got made into an American film, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Will Smith, and Lady Vengeance has been optioned here and there, without much movement in the way of production. [Film School Rejects]
Writer Brian Tucker (Broken City) has been hired to pen the adaptation and power-producer Lorenzo di Bonuventura has jumped on the project – he’s one of the dudes behind G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Oh yea, and Imagine That.
With Park still making strong, insightful films (Thirst) while Hollywood struggles with original material (see the recent di Bonuventura-produced films), remakes like this (get ready for Let Me In) make sense. To an extent.
Putting a guy like di Bonuventura on a project like this suggests its bastardization. Which is not to say the guy isn’t a good producer (he knows how to make hits for the most part), but rather one who’s more business than art. And Park’s film are most definitely smaller, passionate studies of emotion despite all of the bloodshed usually involved.
It’s as though Hollywood’s throwing two different meals into a crock pot and heating it up all the way, hoping the result will be appetizing.
I hope so too, I guess.
What do you think of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance as an American remake?