A new version of influential Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s legendary SEVEN SAMURAI is getting dragged into the 21st century, trading honorable swords for mags loaded with full metal jacket.
British director Scott Mann is making the modernized update for Weinstein Co., condensing Kurosawa’s three-and-a-half hour 1954 “guys on a mission” story into a $60 million action flick that “centers on a town in Northern Thailand that recruits seven paramilitary contractors from around the globe to defend it from an imminent attack.” The remake script was previously worked on by writer John Fusco (THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM, YOUNG GUNS).
Mann last directed the assassin battle royale B-movie THE TOURNAMENT, which starred Robert Carlyle, Ving Rhames, Ian Somerhalder and Kelly Hu.
SEVEN SAMURAI was previously brought to the Old West as THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (and THREE AMIGOS, albeit less so) and to a distant galaxy as the Corman cheapie BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS, and was also transformed into digital insects in Pixar’s A BUG’S LIFE.
Kurosawa’s work has inspired countless others — YOJIMBO became A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and LAST MAN STANDING, the multiple perspective structure of RASHOMON has been utilized in numerous movies and TV shows, and some argue that George Lucas would never have made STAR WARS the same way without THE HIDDEN FORTRESS.
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