Lynch, Carnahan, Grillo, Mackie join forces for Point Blank remake

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

A remake of a film titled POINT BLANK is in the works, and if you're like me your first thought when you hear that will probably be that they're making yet another version of that 1967 John Boorman / Lee Marvin movie – a movie that was based on a Donald E. Westlake (a.k.a. Richard Stark) novel that would later serve as the basis of FULL CONTACT in 1992, PAYBACK in 1999, and PARKER in 2013. But no, this is a completely different POINT BLANK.

Collider's Jeff Sneider got word that Joe Lynch (WRONG TURN 2, EVERLY, MAYHEM) is set to direct a remake of the 2010 French action crime drama POINT BLANK (A BOUT PORTANT), with Joe Carnahan (THE GREY) producing alongside Frank Grillo. Grillo, pictured above in THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR, will also be starring in the film, with his CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER and CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR co-star Anthony Mackie in talks to join him. The project is set up at Netflix.

If the deal is closed with Mackie, he will be playing 

a nurse who’s forced to spring a wounded murder suspect from the hospital when the man’s brother kidnaps his pregnant wife and wants to make a trade.

Grillo will be playing the wounded man the nurse has to keep alive long enough to make that trade.

The screenplay has been written by Adam G. Simon, who has also written a remake of THE RAID for Carnahan and Grillo.

This remake has a budget of $12 million and will be filming this summer. I may not be familiar with the original, but the team of Lynch, Carnahan, Grillo, and Mackie getting together to make an action movie is enough to guarantee I will be watching this one.

Directed by Fred Cavayé, the original POINT BLANK apparently moved along at a breakneck pace, wrapping up the story in just 81 minutes. This isn't the first time it has been remade; mononymous director Chang (a.k.a. Hong-Seung Yoon) helmed a Korean remake called THE TARGET, or PYOJEOK, back in 2014. That one took 98 minutes to tell its version of the story.