Woo remakes French

Hong Kong mayhem maker John Woo has often proclaimed his love of French New Wave film — Jean-Pierre Melville’s brilliant LE SAMOURAI is the primary inspiration for Woo’s ballistic masterpiece THE KILLER. And now Woo is getting his hands on some of the films that influenced his style and is helping bring them into the 21st century.

Woo has rifled through StudioCanal’s library of French properties, including the already-announced update of LE CIRCLE ROUGE (aka THE RED CIRCLE), which he developed and initially planned to direct but has now handed off to fellow Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To (FULLTIME KILLER, THE MISSION). And while he’s also deep in production on his epic THE BATTLE OF RED CLIFF, he’ll apparently have time for HONOR AMONG THIEVES, a remake of the spiffy Alain Delon/Chuck Bronson psychological thriller ADIEU L’AMI about two mercenaries-turned-burglars locked inside the building they intended to rob.

The remake comes from screenwriter, comic book writer and all-around swell cat John Rogers (TRANSFORMERS), who may in fact be directing the $10+ million feature under the “mentoring” of Woo himself. That’s a long way from AMERICAN OUTLAWS.