Do we all remember news of South-Korean auteur Park Chan-Wook’s intentions to remake the great Costa-Gavras’ 2005 film “Le Couperet (The Ax)”? You should.
It’s an adaptation of the novel “The Ax” by Donald E. Westlake that follows a downsized chemist who loses his job to outsourcing and them two years later, still jobless, hits on a solution to genuinely eliminate his competition by any means necessary.
Sounds like a timely and subversive (probably wickedly dark and funny, knowing Park Chan-Wook) take on the global recession. In fact, it’s being called a dark thriller comedy. We expected as much.
Well, it’s happening and confirmed by the trades as Chan-Wook’s next official project.
“I was glad to hear that Park, who has made political genre films, wants to remake my film. I met him and we talked a lot here in Pusan. I didn’t want to give any opinions of mine but I will support him as much as I can in France,” Costa-Gavras said.
No date on when filming begins, but hopefully we’ll have the film in our hands by late 2010. Possibly TIFF 2010 if we’re being major optimists? His previous picture, the vampire absurdist comedy-romance, “Thirst,” wasn’t our favorite of his works, but it still attained his idiosyncratic and twisted take on humanity with lots of bold and ambitious moments.
