It's a sad fact, but the general American audience doesn't watch foreign and subtitled films. While there are obvious exceptions, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, being one, even a great, Oscar winning film like The Lives of Others is lucky to make more than $10 million domestically. As a result, the greatest and/or most crowd pleasing foreign language titles are often remade, typically with disastrous results. Because of this, today's news is not only bad, but it will upset a lot of people.
Deadline has learned that an English-lanuage remake of the classic John Woo film The Killer has gone into production. The original, made in 1989 with Chow Yun-Fat, is a luminary of the action genre and one of the best films to ever come out of Hong Kong. The film will be directed by John H. Lee (A Moment to Remember, Saying Good-bye Oneday) and will star The Good, The Bad and The Weird's Jung Woo-Sung. Woo will serve as a producer on the film, which will be shooting in 3D.
I trust that anyone who has seen John Woo's original film feels the same way that I do about this idea, so I will be closing out this article with one word: fuck.
