According to Latino Review the American remake to Park Chan-wook’s South Korean hit Oldboy that was set to star Will Smith and be directed by Steven Spielberg is dead. Apparently Spielberg’s production company Dreamworks couldn’t come to terms with the producers of the original manga series authored by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi and distributed by Mandate who also own the rights. It is unknown if Mandate just didn’t want the project taken over by Hollywood or if Dreamwroks simply wanted too big a piece of the money train the film was sure to make.

I am actually a bit sad by this. I just watched Oldboy for the first time over the weekend and after I saw it my first thought (after thinking about the end of the film for a bit) was “Spielberg could so pull this off.” I was weary of Will Smith as the lead though. Perhaps another smaller studio could take on the project. It sounds like a perfect fit over at Lionsgate who seems to live for movies like Oldboy these days. Just looks at some of their other films, Crank, Crank II, My Bloody Valentine 3-D, The Saw Series, Hostel, all films that are disturbing in their own right.

Are you upset the Oldboy remake is dead?