'Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance' remake moves forward

While most of the Park Chan-wook remake attention has justifiably focused on Spike Lee's redo of his classic revenge tale, Oldboy, the fact is the entire Vengeance Trilogy is slated for an American make-over.  Last year we learned Charlize Theron would be starring in a remake of Lady Vengeance, with Oscar-winner William Monahan providing the script. But also three years ago we first learned that Brian Tucker (Broken City) had been hired to pen a remake of the first film in the trilogy, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. Now word out of Cannes is that it's definitely moving forward with Lorenzo di Bonaventura producing.

The original story starred Song Kang-ho (the upcoming Snow Piercer) and Bae Doona (Cloud Atlas) in the story of a deaf-mute man who strikes a deal with a black market organ dealer to secure a kidney for his dying sister, only to get ripped off. Desperate, he and his anarchist girlfriend kidnap the daughter of a wealthy CEO to use for random, only for the situation to get ugly real fast. Deadline's description of Tucker's version sounds wildly different, following "two men who are bound by their common sense of loss and headed on a collision course of revenge". Hopefully in the process of making the story work for American audiences they don't lose what made it work to begin with.

A director is being sought right now, and presumably casting will shortly follow. Spike Lee's Oldboy opens on October 11th.