Last night we talked about plans for two films to follow The Raid, that being Gareth Evans‘ attention-getting Indonesian action film that has been kicking the asses of audiences up and down the festival circuit. The film follows the efforts of an elite police task force charged with cleaning out a building in Jakarta controlled by a drug lord, who runs it as sort of a safe house for criminals.
Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions pre-bought the rights to Berandal, the film Evans will make that will act as sequel to The Raid, and that film should shoot at the end of this year. (Originally the plan was to shoot the sequel this month, but things have been pushed to the end of 2012.)
But there’s also the pesky matter of the remake of The Raid. Screen Gems ended up with the remake rights when SPWA bought all rights to the film after a Cannes presentation last year. Now the company has hired Brad Ingelsby (The Low Dweller) to write the remake. Read More »
UPDATE: Variety repeats the news, but refers to the film as Out of the Furnace.
Since Crazy Heart became a critical, awards and art-house success, director Scott Cooper has been linked to a few different projects. Jennifer Lawrence was hoping he’d make Lie Down in Darkness, and ask her to star in it. He was an option for the Warner Bros. film Tales From the Gangster Squad, and mentioned as a possible director for The Hatfields and the McCoys.
While some of those projects might still happen (Tales From the Gangster Squad is definitely in the hands of another, however) Relativity has hired him to rewrite the Brad Ingelsby script The Low Dweller, and to direct the film. Read More »
A couple months ago it was announced that Tom Cruise would star in an adaptation of the Wildstorm comic book Sleeper for producer Sam Raimi. Well apparently the star is not yet formerly attached, but is still interested. Warner Bros has hired newbie scribe Brad Ingelsby (The Honeyfields) to pen a script. Ridley Scott and Leonardo DiCaprio are attached to his first script sale, Low Dweller, which Relativity Media purchased for $500,000 against $1 million.
Written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips, the story follows a covert “sleeper” operative named Holden Carver (aka The Conductor), who is fused with an alien artifact that makes him not only impervious to pain , but also able to pass it along to others through skin contact. Carver has been placed undercover in a villainous organization led by TAO (a WildC.A.T.s villain from Alan Moore’s run). But when the only guy who knows that he is an undercover agent goes into a coma, Carver must question right and wrong, as he falls and for a member of the group while rising through he ranks.
Sleeper placed #81 on Comic Book Resource’s top 100 comic book runs of all time. Aside from being a spin-off of WildC.A.T.s, Sleeper also features characters from Gen 13. Warner Bros hopes to turn the project into a franchise. I haven’t read the series, but the synopsis certainly sounds interesting enough for the big screen.
Update: Ridley Scott and Leonardo Dicaprio are not attached to Sleeper. Variety originally confused the project Ingelsby’s last screenplay adaptation, Low Dweller.
source: Variety
