Director Phillip Noyce has always embodied the word “workmanlike.” Not quiet an auteur, but not a faceless hack either, Noyce has succeeded in making above-average or at least financially successful studio fare like “Patriot Games,” “Salt,” “Clear And Present Danger” and “The Bone Collector.” Every now and then he’ll do a prestige pic like “The Quiet American” or “Rabbit Proof Fence” to mixed results. And while lately he’s circled the time travel pic “Timeless,” the thriller “Hunter Killer” and the true life nature conservancy story “Our Wild Life,” we didn’t think things were this bad.
ScreenDaily reports that Noyce is going to slum it hard, directing a “reinvention” of the Jean Claude Van Damme movie that made him a star, “Bloodsport.”
Writer Robert Mark Kamen (“The Fifth Element,” “Taken,” “Columbiana“) will write the script which “will follow an American who goes to Brazil to recover from the violence he has experienced in Afghanistan who gets involved in a martial arts contest.” So yeah, they’re basically just gonna redo that first act into some kind of war veteran shell shock mumbo jumbo before getting to all the martial arts fighting goodness.
No word yet on who will star or when this will shoot, but Noyce seems pretty much ready to perform Dim Mak on his career with this one.