Back in March, we expressed a reasonable level of bewilderment when Columbia Pictures announced their plan to purchase rights to an English-language remake of Diederik Van Rooijen‘s Dutch thriller Taped — a film that, at the time of the aforementioned notice, hadn’t even been in theaters in its home country for more than a single week. American remakes of foreign commodities are, of course, far from uncommon these days, but to gamble so soon on an unproven product seemed, at the very least, a bit premature.

Perhaps wisely, then, Red Wagon Entertainment’s Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher — the project’s principal producers — proceeded to put on the brakes a little, as today’s announcement of the hiring of screenwriter Brian Nelson is the first thing we’ve heard on this project since early March. And it’s a good hire, I’d say — Nelson‘s résumé, which includes the chilling Ellen Page-starrer Hard Candy and the effective, underseen Devil, primes him well for the genre tropes that seem to be central to the nature of Taped. [The Wrap]

Like the Dutch original, its plot follows “a couple that videotapes a murder by a bad cop while they are on holiday in Argentina. They [soon] become embroiled in the drama and end up fighting for their lives in order to escape.”

With films such as The Great Gatsby and the soon-to-arrive Lawless under their watch, Red Wagon is beginning to resurrect itself as a production company worth keeping an eye on, and it should be interesting to track how Taped will fit into their upcoming platform of releases. Hopefully the acquisition of a capable director is the next step on the horizon.

Have you heard anything substantial on the original Taped? Do you think an American remake will be successful?