After announcing that he just started filming ‘Red Hook Summer’ where he’ll be reprising his iconic role of Mookie from 1989’s ‘Do the Right Thing,’ the powers that be at Mandate Pictures have officially pegged Spike Lee as their choice to helm the long-awaited American remake of Chan-Wook Park’s 2003 revenge thriller, ‘Oldboy.’ Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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For those who haven’t seen the original, ‘Oldboy’ is the story of a middle-aged South Korean father who finds himself kidnapped and held captive in a makeshift prison for 15 years without any contact with the outside world or any explanation as to who put him in there or what he did to deserve it. Then one day he finds himself released back into society and immediately begins searching high and low to exact his revenge and get his life back while becoming romantically involved with a much younger woman.
There’s no arguing that the guy’s made some damn good movies in his day, but we can’t help but scratch our heads a bit at this news. Chan-Wook Park’s ‘Oldboy’ was awesome, it was insane, but nothing about it really screams “Spike Lee,” whose career has been far more synonymous with in-your-face racial dramas than movies about guys who interrogate fools by pulling out their teeth with a hammer. But then again, he did do a bang-up job on ‘Inside Man,’ and that was as commercial as they come for Spike.
Screenwriter Mark Protosevich has already adapted a script for Spike to work with, so now we just have to wait and see how this unlikely pairing turns out and who on Earth they’ll get to play Oh-Dae Su?
