Corona | Coming Attractions

With talk that Christian Bale is being headhunted to play the bad guy in the English Oldboy remake, everyone was wondering about who was being considered for the main female role in the film. Now we know: Rooney Mara, the actress who played the top female role in two other remakes, last year's A Nightmare on Elm Street and this winter's forthcoming version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Josh Brolin will topline the Oldboy remake, playing the part of the man kidnapped and held in confinment for 15 years. Filming is slated to begin next March.

The rumor is true: Spike Lee will indeed direct the American remake of Oldboy. The deal was announced this morning by Mandate Pictures and its president Nathan Kahane.

Lee won't be able to start working on the film right away, as today is also the first day of shooting on his next movie which is titled Red Hook Summer (and which he might be reprising the role of Mookie, the pizza delivery guy from Do the Right Thing.) That's alright because casting has to happen now on the new Oldboy -- and the rumor is Will Smith may be Spike's main guy for playing the primary role of the kidnapped man out for his revenge.

Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend) wrote the screenplay for Lee's Oldboy and will be a co-producer on it. Doug Davison will produce as he's done before on The Departed and the American remake of The Grudge.

The rumor du jour is that Spike Lee has been offered the directing job for Oldboy, the American remake of the Korean action-thriller and rewrote the rules on how a man gets his revenge.

The story comes from Twitch, and Lee's an intriguing candidate. Spike's not the kind of guy to attach himself to remakes and do-overs, so if he's been wooed by the material, it probably means that there's meat on the bone.

At one point the talk was that none other than Steven Spielberg wanted to helm the English language version with Will Smith to play the leading role, but that version of Oldboy collapsed into development hell four years ago.

For those not in the know, Oldboy was originally a 2003 Korean movie directed by Park Chan-wook. It's about a man who is kidnapped and held for 15 years inside a hotel room by anonymous captors, then suddenly let go one day. As the man tries to uncover the secrets behind who his captors were, he leaves a trail of broken bodies across the city. There's also a hefty twist that leaves the viewer squirming in their seat.