Filmmaker James Wan is looking to remake the Korean thriller “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” at Paramount Pictures with Blumhouse-Atomic Monster and Sly Stallone‘s banner Balboa Productions behind it.
The report from Deadline adds that the film’s original star, Don Lee (“Train To Busan”), aka Ma Dong-seok, is set to return. Lee isn’t a stranger to Hollywood productions, having a key role in the Chloé Zhao-directed Marvel film “Eternals” and has slowly become an international action star (we’ll keep our fingers crossed he’ll eventually join the world of “John Wick“).
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Screenwriter Shay Hatten (“Army of the Dead”) is currently working on the screenplay after veteran writer Brian Helgeland (“Man on Fire,” “L.A. Confidential”) had tackled the original draft, and will serve as an executive producer on the Paramount project. Having Hatten enlisted for something like “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” remake isn’t all that shocking, given his previous action world work on “John Wick 3,” “John Wick 4,” and the Ana de Armas spinoff pic “Ballerina.”
Here is an official logline for the original from 2019, written and directed by Lee Won-tae:
Mafia boss Cheonan Dong-soo (Don Lee) was subjected to a daring attack by a serial killer and miraculously survived. To restore his reputation, he teams up with a local detective and decides to take revenge on the criminal.
Interestingly enough, Wan had once attempted to produce an American version of Lee’s popular zombie outbreak flick “Train To Busan” for Warner Bros., but that never really materialized despite the attachment of director Timo Tjahjanto and a script from Gary Dauberman.
It’s a project that is ripe for a remake and helps that Wan/Paramount were wise enough to bring back Don Lee, who is quite a charismatic actor, and a new version of “The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil” could help boost his profile in the West. We’ll be curious to see who else Wan assembles for the movie.
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