Park Chan-Wook told Josh Brolin not to remake Oldboy; plus new pics

August 13th 2013, 9:59pm

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Out of all the remakes that have come out of Hollywood, the one that fans are against the most (or at least make it seem that way) is OLDBOY. At this moment they may only convey a large sense of dread and skepticism rather than out right loathing but to be fair, Park Chan-wook did something that was creative as well as innovative. Does Lee’s version even have a shred of that?

We won’t know until the film comes out on November 27th but we did find a nice little tidbit in the IAMA that Lee did on Reddit the other day. Here’s a piece of the Q&A:

RubenTheCuban: You’re directing a remake of Oldboy, a brilliant, original Korean film. It is a very tall order. Are you nervous? What do you want to do differently? Also, any parts for a jobbing actor?

Spike Lee: Before we started the shoot, Josh Brolin went to Park Chan-wook and asked for his blessing. He told Josh “you and Spike make your own film, don’t remake ours.” And that’s what we did.

The comment following the exchange from Redditor, Reverve made me laugh so hard I started snorting:

“To me that almost sounds like Brolin didn’t get his blessing.”

Personally, I don’t know how to feel about it. I love the cast involved but I feel that in the attempt to make it something of its own will just fall flat. That said, the new still from the film are below. That one of Brolin reading his fortune out of the cookie just screams “caption me”.