A successful film from abroad? Hollywood can’t accept that. That’s why a cult thriller from South Korea is now getting a US remake for the second time.
Anyone who has seen this film once will at least remember the ending forever (Source: Themoviedb.org)
Hollywood loves remakes. Films in particular that have already been successful abroad already demonstrate the potential of a story and make it very easy for the US studios, after all, they no longer have to come up with anything themselves. It is not uncommon for the strategy to buy the rights to a foreign language film for the USA and then never release it. This ensures that US film fans do not yet know the original film, so nothing stands in the way of the remake.
At least that’s what happened with “My Best & Me”, the US remake of the French hit “Pretty Best Friends”. However, Hollywood took too much time with other films, such as “Oldboy.” Even if not every film fan feels at home in the world of South Korean cinema, Park Chan-wook’s second part of the Vengeance trilogy developed into a cult film. It wasn’t until 2013, ten years after the first release of “Oldboy”, that US producers began to listen.
Longer, different, better? Oldboy (2013) (Source: Themoviedb.org)
With Josh Brolin and Elizabeth Olsen in front of the camera and Spike Lee behind the camera, the US remake of “Oldboy” sounded promising, at least on paper, but the reviews were miserable and no one was satisfied with the box office results. The general consensus was that “Oldboy” from 2003 is already perfect and doesn’t need a remake. They stuck to it – until now!
Lionsgate Television is working on an English-language “Oldboy” series. For this extended version of the story, the production studio receives support from Park Chan-wook (“The Sympathizer”), the director of the first “Oldboy” adaptation. The “Old Boy” manga serves as a template here again. According to Deadline, Park says about this collaboration:
Lionsgate Television shares my creative vision to bring “Oldboy” to the world of television. I’m looking forward to working with a studio whose brand stands for bold, original and risk-taking stories.
Park Chan-wook
Since Park’s version of “Oldboy” is now so well known and the big twist at the end of the film became famous, it is easy to forget that the “Old Boy” manga ends very differently and has many other differences. So the new “Oldboy” series could have clear added value if even fans of the film were offered a version of the story that they were unfamiliar with.
Can you recognize these 13 films from just one picture?
(Source: Themoviedb.org)
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