Its really becoming a day for Korean/American productions, with it being announced that the OLDBOY remake has a director in Spike Lee and now Arnold Schwarzenegger confirmed for Kim Jee-woon’s THE LAST STAND.
Arnie has recently ended his two term run as the ‘Grovenator’ of California and announced that he would rekindle his once ‘proud’ acting career with three projects. The crappy cartoon, THE GOVERNATOR, then tentatively signing on for both, Kim Jee-woon’s THE LAST STAND and CRY MACHO, a thriller about a retired horse trainer involved in an international kidnapping plot from director Brad Furman (THE LINCOLN LAWYER).
Except for the animated series the above two projects were put on hold due to the scandal Arnie became embroiled in. But with all that dying down he’s back on the horse with the Korean/American production, but at a reduced fee from all the negative attention attracted.
Last year at the London Korean Film Festival Kim Jee-woon promoted he’s last film, I SAW THE DEVIL, and stated his reason for wishing to work in the US with Paul Quinn over at Hangul Celluloid;
Making an American film is not a dream of mine at all, it’s simply that having made a lot of films in Korea, an appeal has built in Hollywood and the offer just came about. For me personally, I’m really thinking of it as a different take and a different perspective and since ‘I Saw The Devil’ had so many problems, it will be refreshing for me to try a different environment.
And over at Slash Film they have a quote on what THE LAST STAND is about;
My concept for The Last Stand is that it’s kind of a combination of Die Hard and High Noon where (the latter) was about protecting something very important that needs to be protected, while Die Hard is a very drawn-out, long process that almost kills someone in the process, so my film will be something that has to be very well protected and in the process, we almost die protecting it in a way. So if I Saw the Devil was about a person’s extreme remorse about having lost something that they couldn’t protect,The Last Stand would be where someone puts their lives on the line to protect something that’s very important and it will be a bit more optimistic film in that regard.
With all this Korean/US news I wouldn’t be surprised if we heard word of Park Chan-wook’s STOKER. THE LAST STAND is looking to start shooting in September 2011.
