Remake producer extraordinaire Roy Lee (THE RING, THE GRUDGE, THE DEPARTED, etc.) is currently supervising production of Takashi Shimizu’s 7500 (startlingly, not a remake), but he recently found some time to chat up some of his future projects with Collider. While there are a few interesting tidbits overall, I chose to focus on one film in particular: Spike Lee’s remake of Chan-wook Park’s OLDBOY.
Lee (Roy, not Spike) was coerced into shedding some light on the movie; specifically, how much of the violent, perverse content from the original remains.
“It’s very similar, but we’ve added new elements,” Lee said. “Or, 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.”
As for the original’s considerably dark ending, Lee claims the remake will (somehow) be even grimmer: “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.”
Finally, a question about the brilliant and infamous hallway fight sequence was raised; Lee had the following answer: “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.”
That’s a bold claim right there, but then again, everything about remaking a modern classic is bold. To read the full interview with Roy Lee, click HERE.
OLDBOY begins pre-production in January, with an eye toward shooting in March.
7500 star Leslie Bibb