John Hillcoat Remaking Film Noir 'Le Cercle Rouge'?

Director John Hillcoat probably didn't get a fair shake with the release of The Road. The Weinsteins never put it in more than 400 theaters in the US, and even though it didn't cost that much - $25 million - that's about all it brought in worldwide. Hillcoat certainly didn't get a fair shake with Promised Land, which saw financing dry up even though he had acquired Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams, Ryan Gosling, Shia LaBeouf, Paul Dano, and Michael Shannon. But it looks like he's rebounding rather nicely, grabbing Christian Bale for The Revenant, which he'll start shooting soon, and now The Playlist says he has another film lined up, this time a remake of Jean-Pierre Melville's 1970 French film noir, Le Cercle Rouge. The original is a heist picture, but it doesn't really follow the traditional formula. It is, however, a great opportunity for a remake, which is why this isn't the first stab anyone's taken at revisiting it. John Woo, who is a huge fan of the film, was set to do a remake a few years ago, and another version was to star Orlando Bloom and Liam Neeson. Both fell apart. Part of that could be because, let's be honest, studios aren't usually daring enough to remake a 40-year-old genre-bending French film. I mean, it wasn't ever a line of toys, for crissakes. But Playlist reports that there are so many producers involved - Eric Fellner, Tim Bevan, Arthur Sarkissian, Jay Stern, and astonishingly, Brett Ratner - that it's hard to see how the money can walk away this time. If they're going for a tone similar to what Melville accomplished with the original, Hillcoat's the right guy. And it would be great to see a remake go for that angle again.

Comments

[Amy Adams fan]

Amy and Scarlett? Interesting duo!