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Twitch Site: Colin Firth Passes on Oldboy Remake

posted on by Jennifer Sherman
The King's Speech actor turns down role as Adrian in Spike Lee's remake film

The Twitch film website reported on Thursday that actor Colin Firth (The King's Speech, A Single Man, Love Actually) turned down the villain role of Adrian in Spike Lee's remake of Park Chan-Wook's live-action film Oldboy. Firth confirmed that he was offered the role in an interview with the Moviefone website last month but remained vague about his potential involvement.

Director Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing, Jungle Fever, Malcolm X) signed onto Mandate Pictures' American remake of Oldboy in July, and Josh Brolin is slated to play the male lead. Park's film was itself inspired by Garon Tsuchiya and Nobuaki Minegishi's manga Old Boy.

The industry news source Variety reported in August that Academy Award-winning actor Christian Bale (The Fighter, Batman Begins, American Psycho) was considering the American remake's villain role. In October, a Variety writer also reported that Mandate Pictures is still filling its female lead role for the film since Rooney Mara (The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo remake) passed on it.

Mandate Pictures is developing the project with producers Doug Davison and Roy Lee (The Ring, Dark Water [2005], Death Note and Godzilla remake plans) of Vertigo Entertainment and Lee's 40 Acres & A Mule Productions. Mark Protosevich (Thor, I Am Legend) wrote a script, and Mandate Pictures President Nathan Kahane is serving as executive producer.

The trade magazine Variety earlier described the Korean film's story about "a man who's kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years. When he's finally released and begins looking into the reason for his captivity, he soon finds out that his kidnapper has even more torturous plans for him." (The original manga has the protagonist imprisoned for a different number of years and does not have the Korean film's added plot twist ending.) Lee also said that "the ending will be something that the audiences will all be... very happy with. In fact, some may consider it to be a bit darker."

Dark Horse Comics publishes the manga in North America.


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