When it comes to English-language remakes of South Korean movies, it can go one of three ways: sometimes you get a Bugonia, sometimes you get The Lake House, and sometimes you get Spike Lee’s Oldboy. James Wan will be hoping, we should imagine, to land more at the Bugonia end of the spectrum with his next directorial outing. Per THR‘s reporting, the Malignant and The Conjuring filmmaker is set to produce and direct an English-language reimagining of Lee Won-tae’s action thriller The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil.
A crowd-pleasing hit in the Midnight Madness slot at Cannes back in 2019, Won-tae’s original movie starred Don Lee — aka Ma Dong-seok — and Kim Mu-yeol as a gangster and a cop who reluctantly team up to catch Kim Sung-kyu’s psychopathic serial killer. Boasting more twists than a chocolate torsade and no end of cat-and-mouse, cross-double-cross shenanigans, the movie’s international appeal isn’t hard to see, and Paramount actually bought the rights four years ago back in 2022. The remake, penned by John Wick and Rebel Moon writing alum Shay Hatten following an initial draft by L.A. Confidential scribe, will see Lee reprise his role from the original film. Casting is as yet unconfirmed for ‘The Cop’ and ‘The Devil’ who’ll appear alongside him.
For Wan, who’s recently been making most of his filmmaking moves in a producorial capacity under his Blumhouse-Atomic Monster banner (fresh Saw and Paranormal Activity reboots are among the projects currently in the Malaysian-born Aussie’s pipeline), The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil will likely mark the filmmaker’s first feature as director since 2023’s Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom. We’ve no word yet on when this one’s due to shoot or indeed hit cinemas just yet, and at this point it could well be a Paramount Warner Bros. film by the time it reaches us, but for now colour us intrigued. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a weird urge to go and revisit The Lake House, for old times’ sake…
Sources Links
THR
