Caffeinated Clint
Chris Columbus, director of [mostly fantasy blockbusters] “Adventures in Babysitting” and “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, is set to remake the Korean film “Hello Ghost”, according to Deadline.
The film, which will be financed out of Korea, tells of a young man who tries to kill himself and is later haunted by four ghosts. They won’t stop haunting him until he helps each of them fulfill one wish.
“After watching Hello Ghost I was immediately struck by the film’s ability to mix comedy, drama and complex emotional themes,” Columbus said in a statement. “Its strong universal storyline translates to any culture, and I’m looking forward to bringing a version of this wonderful story to the English-speaking audience.”
Meanwhile, Susanne Bier, the Danish director who made her English-language debut a year or two back with the criminally-underseen “Things We Lost in the Fire”, has set her sights on remaking French kidnapping thriller ”Rapt”, Deadline says.
The original, nominated for a Cesar (the equivalent of an Oscar), follows a corporate chairman who is held for ransom by a group of highly organized criminals while family, the corporation and the police are pitted against each other.
Producer Milling Smith tells the site, “The underlying story is definitely a high stakes thriller but at its core it is about human struggle. We have a real character drama in this story with people fighting for survival while seeing their finely balanced worlds thrown into chaos. Susanne has shown in her very special films the delicate hand she has in bringing out the truth and humanity in the most challenging of situations.”
