Spike Lee To Direct 'Old Boy' Remake

The Moviefone Blog:

After vaguely announcing on Twitter this morning that he's just started filming 'Red Hook Summer' where he'll be reprising his iconic role of Mookie from 1989's 'Do the Right Thing,' the powers that be at Mandate Pictures have officially pegged Spike Lee as their choice to helm the long-awaited American remake of Chan-Wook Park's 2003 revenge thriller, 'Oldboy.'

Read the whole story: The Moviefone Blog

Comments

[Beka13]

08:21 AM on 07/13/2011

The only director who could pull pff remaking Oldboy is Quentin Tarantino. Period. Although I will give it chance when it comes out on Blue Ray. I hope it is cast correctly and he is able to keep it the dark masterpiece that it is....

[AfroGoddess]

12:34 AM on 07/13/2011

For all of Spike Lee's accolades, I do think that his success during the late 1980s and 1990s pigeon holed in into this role of "race director". The reality is that he's a brilliant director, regardless of race. I think that he spent a lot of his career writing and directing the stories that he wanted to tell about race, politics, and society. For all the humor in his works, his films weren't made solely to entertain the masses. He wanted to be thought provoking and to stimulate public dialogue about issues that we only discussed in private.

Now there's a shift towards thriller pieces. He's never going to do Terry Perry types of films, but it should be no surprise that he takes on Old Boy after Inside Man and Son of Sam.

[GirlInNYC]

10:34 PM on 07/12/2011

Yaay @ bringing back Mookie. I don't know that other film. Spike's strength is those old '80s racially rooted NY Brooklyn hits. Love those.

[sevenzarkseven]

05:32 PM on 07/12/2011

Seeing how the original was based on a manga series, one could play semantics and say the new movie is not a technically remake, but another take on the source material. That being said, the Korean film deviated a bit from the manga, but in a good way, so I don't know how a new one could be an improvement.

[Hampton Roads]

04:54 PM on 07/12/2011

Is he going to blame white people in the film?

[msstrick40]

12:08 AM on 07/13/2011

Is that what you got out of the "Malcolm X" movie????

[AfroGoddess]

12:28 AM on 07/13/2011

Exactly where does he portray White people in a way that has no resemblance to history? If you don't know what the man films about then don't comment.

[ThinkGlobal]

03:14 PM on 07/12/2011

The original was gripping. Love to see US actors in a remake...

[Max Shaw]

03:05 PM on 07/12/2011

Really? Def. a weird choice for him...Not sure he's the right fit for Oldboy....

[QU347]

12:31 PM on 07/12/2011

Ppl saying he's a racist or only makes racial films need to know that Spike's best friend is John Tuturro who is italian, his former film instructor and current mentor for 30 yrs is Martin Scorsese. Clockers, 25th Hour, and Summer of Sam had white leads so he doesn't just put black ppl as his lead. Also Clockers, 25th Hour, Summer of Sam, Inside Man, He Got Game, School Daze, Mo Better Blues were not about race.

[AfroGoddess]

12:36 AM on 07/13/2011

Some folks are just slow. They see that a film actually has Black characters, then suddenly its a "Black film". And if one of the characters isn't dancing, cracking jokes, or dressed in drag then it must be about race and Black folks must be pissed off somehow.

Whatever!

[amd02148]

07:16 AM on 07/13/2011

Well School Daze was about race.

[QU347]

10:21 AM on 07/13/2011

School Daze was about how frats were in HBCU's and how the african american women would show hatred towards each other because of their hair. Like I said School Daze had nothing to do with race

[Iain Banks]

10:53 AM on 07/12/2011

Spike Lee is know for "in your face racial dramas"? Really? Can someone make a simple review of this guy without resorting to republican newspeak?

[Absolute]

12:04 PM on 07/12/2011

Thank you, well said.

[LoLo72]

10:46 AM on 07/12/2011

I am so over him. He is the Al Sharpton of Hollywood. I'm all for a cause & standing by it, but does he have nothing else to offer? He is more racist then any white person I know. He could do so much by trying to unite races instead of bitching about everything & making everything about race. If a white person said the things he said but in reverse it would ruin their career. I am very tired of the reverse racism. Make a change for everyone & treat everyone equally.

[jdaboss]

05:05 PM on 07/12/2011

go die.. seriously.

[msstrick40]

12:10 AM on 07/13/2011

LoLo is so apropo

[BabaLou7]

09:54 AM on 07/12/2011

He's got NO right rankin' on Tyler Perry, and this proves it!

[AfroGoddess]

12:38 AM on 07/13/2011

How does this prove it?

[DannyGee]

09:43 AM on 07/12/2011

Digging deep to remake that old classic from 2003 there Spike?

[sevenzarkseven]

05:24 PM on 07/12/2011

That's nothing, Martin Scorceses's "The Departed" was a remake of a Chinese film that preceded it by only three years.

[AfroGoddess]

12:39 AM on 07/13/2011

In addition, you know Americans can't watch foreign actors or read subtitles! The film was going to get made, so why not Spike?

[DannyGee]

09:57 AM on 07/13/2011

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon won 40 awards and grossed over $200 million in the US.

[Hampton Roads]

09:06 AM on 07/12/2011

he's just started filming 'Red Hook Summer' where he'll be reprising his iconic role of Mookie from 1989's 'Do the Right Thing,'

Got nothing new, eh?

LOL

[AfroGoddess]

12:39 AM on 07/13/2011

Uh, plenty of directors do sequels. You need to calm down! Before you dig into Spike Lee, you need to go break your hand pimp slapping George Lucas for ruining his classic.

[Tone67]

09:04 AM on 07/12/2011

I supposed to there will be the following

moving sidewalks
excessove and ill timed profanity
some incoherent 10 minute rant
His sister in some role maybe even a cameo

Inside man had a good plot that was held back by wack directing, none of his other movies besides do the right thing are worth mentioning.

[Iain Banks]

10:54 AM on 07/12/2011

You've done better of course, your stellar film career speaks for itself.

[Tone67]

11:55 AM on 07/12/2011

If i chose to make films there is no doubt i could do better, however i have chosen to watch them instead when they are good and spike lee has wasted my time.

[msstrick40]

12:11 AM on 07/13/2011

Malcolm X was dayum good movie.

[Spartan Ideal]

04:15 AM on 07/12/2011

I was kind of taken aback by this news, when I first heard it. Definitely a strange choice for him. I like his films, but I'm curious to see if he gives this the same sort of racial perspective he puts into nearly all his films. If that's the case, this could either be a brilliant revision on the concept, or completely distract from what made the original so great.

[AfroGoddess]

12:46 AM on 07/13/2011

I think that in the late 1980s and the 1990s Spike found a niche market in telling stories from one (of many) Black POVs. There are plenty of directors and writers who exhaust a topic and then move on to something else. They say what they wanted to say and show us that they are are multi-dimensional human beings as we are!

Of Spike's 23 films, only 8 could be classified as "race films". Just because there are Black characters in a film or as leads does not mean that the film is about race. Just like, when you see a film with predominately White people, Black folks shouldn't assume that its about race, should they?

[Spartan Ideal]

01:20 AM on 07/13/2011

No, but when a director is predominantly known for those films (and they're by far the ones where I connected the strongest, so good movies are clearly multicultural in appeal), it's hard to expect this will be good if he chooses not to put his personal spin on it (have you seen Old Boy btw? It's a great film, and doesn't need a remake).

Movies like Inside Man and Miracle at St. Anna left me cold (though to be fair, the former stars actors I've burned out on, and felt like Lee was trying too hard to fit in). WTLB also strongly hinged on suggesting racism was a factor in the response to Katrina (arguably true, but it still sets the movie in the same vein as his others).

The ethnicity of leads is also pretty meaningless to me-Will Smith was attached to this for quite some time, and I didn't think that would even remotely affect how they adapted the story, compared to Min-sik Choi in the original, or if they cast a white actor of similar cache to Smith. As long as an actor brings some edge or depth to their role, that's all thats needed, so I don't think it's fair to claim that I'm just being blinded by the colour of Lee's leads-more, I just don't think he's been a great filmmaker for quite some time.