Lanie
If you’re going to remake a classic, put your own, unique spin on it.
Clearly, that’s what “Big Bad Wolves” helmers Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado were planning to do with their recently announced “Death Wish” remake. Sadly, Paramount-MGM weren’t after anything especially interesting or ‘different’ – for lack of a better word – they wanted a straight-up do-over of Michael Winner’s action classic. Which explains why they also insisted Bruce Willis star in it. And is thus the reason the production will now push on without Keshales and Papushado.
“We wanted to stay away from the original and problematic (albeit fun to watch) Michael Winner film, and move more towards the spirit of the original novel by Brian Garfield – an excellent minimalist novel that never got the cinematic treatment it deserved”, the filmmakers told Deadline. “Unfortunately, the time table for the project did not allow us to make the big changes we wanted to make to the script, and as time passed we realized that we were not going to get what we wanted for this project. Last night, after long deliberations we finally decided to leave the project.”
The up-and-comers were actually replacements for the film’s original director, Joe Carnahan. Carnahan split when he couldn’t convince the studio to hire anyone but ‘I’ll do anything for a dollar and a pancake’ action hero Willis.
No doubt some broke gun-for-hire will be announced as taking over “Death Wish” shortly.
