Adam Wingard says his Face/Off movie will be a sequel not a remake

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Update: Adam Wingard responded to the news of the Face/Off remake on Instagram, but he had something surprising to say — the remake isn't a remake at all, but rather a direct sequel. "I would NEVER re-imagine or remake FACE/OFF," wrote Wingard. "It’s a perfect action movie. Simon Barrett and I are writing a direct SEQUEL!" That's interesting and definitely leaves the door open for a possible appearance from Nicolas Cage and John Travolta. Perhaps we'll even see the next evolution of the face transplant technology. We'll keep you updated as we hear more.

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Filled to the brim with '90s excess and featuring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage at the top of their game, John Woo's Face/Off is one hell of a ride, so naturally, it's time for a remake. Paramount Pictures got the ball rolling on a remake back in 2019, and now Deadline has reported that the studio have tapped Godzilla vs. Kong director Adam Wingard with helming the reboot.

In addition to directing the Face/Off remake, Adam Wingard will also write the script with Simon Barrett. Paramount had originally tapped Oren Uziel with penning the script, but Deadline says that Wingard and Barrett will be starting from scratch. The original 1997 film starred John Travolta as Sean Archer, an FBI agent obsessed with catching Castor Troy, a homicidal sociopath played by Nicolas Cage.  When Troy is knocked into a coma shortly after revealing that a bomb is set to go off somewhere in the city, Archer takes the obvious route of having Troy's face surgically transplanted onto him so that he can learn the bomb's location. Completely reasonable, but wouldn't you know it, Troy comes out of that coma after all and forces the doctors to place Archer's face on him. So we've got Nicolas Cage playing John Travolta and John Travolta playing Nicolas Cage, it's exactly the amount of crazy you'd expect, complete with armies of slow-motion doves.

Adam Wingard's Godzilla vs. Kong has been delayed several times due to COVID-19, but it now slated to debut in theaters and on HBO Max on March 31, 2021. "In a time when monsters walk the Earth, humanity’s fight for its future sets Godzilla and Kong on a collision course that will see the two most powerful forces of nature on the planet collide in a spectacular battle for the ages," reads the official synopsis. "As Monarch embarks on a perilous mission into uncharted terrain and unearths clues to the Titans’ origins, a human conspiracy threatens to wipe the creatures, both good and bad, from the face of the earth forever."