I’ve composed a fair number of posts on the upcoming Oldboy remake and have never ceased to sing the praises of the original, which manages to be thrilling, disturbing and astonishing in equal measure. I’m not sure to what extent Korean revenge thrillers are everyone’s cup of tea, or how many of you have an appetite for watching an actor eat a live octopus, but it really is a breath-taking piece of cinema.

Producer Roy Lee, who has been the impetus behind a lot of the Hollywood reworkings of Asian cinema (The Ring, The Grudge, The Departed), has been talking about the remake of Old Boy and somewhat bewilderingly, reckons the remake will be darker than the original. Pre-production on Oldboy will begin in January 2012, with shooting set to kick off in March. Lee had the following to say about what we might expect:-

“Mark Protosevich has come up with new elements to it that will throw off the audience who have seen the original movie because there are new characters and new situations that present themselves in a way that changes the story but eventually go in the same direction. The ending will be something that the audiences will all be…especially the fans of the original will be very happy with. In fact, some may consider it to be a bit darker. There’s a sort of different interpretation of that hallway scene that is going to hopefully be Spike’s signature moment in the movie that we want to show in a way that we’ve never seen done in an action movie.”

So far, so promising. Keep the essence intact, but embellish in such a way that is has something new to say, rather than just having change for change’s sake. I’m not sure how I feel about this at all. It’s not as if the original is sacred ground, rather that I’m not sure the remake can be surprising or different enough. The last thing we need is another Let the Right One In / Let Me In debacle.

Source: Collider.

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Dave has been writing for HeyUGuys since mid-2010 and has found them to be the most intelligent, friendly, erudite and insightful bunch of film fans you could hope to work with. He's gone from ham-fisted attempts at writing the news to interviewing Lawrence Bender, Renny Harlin and Julian Glover, to writing articles about things he loves that people have actually read. He has fairly broad tastes as far as films are concerned, though given the choice he's likely to go for Con Air over Battleship Potemkin most days. He's pretty sure that 2001: A Space Odyssey is the most overrated mess in cinematic history.