A US remake of Gareth Evans' startling martial arts film The Raid moves ahead, as the director of Expendables 3 joins the production...
Gareth Evans'The Raid hit festival screens like a hammer blow in 2011, establishing the director as a formidable action filmmaker and turning Iko Uwais into an indie martial arts star.
The Raid 2: Berandal is out next month, and it's already being touted as a great action film. But while the fame of both the series and those involved in it continue to rise, American production company Screen Gems has been working away on an English-language remake of The Raid, having snapped up the rights shortly after it screened at the Toronto Film Festival.
We've now learned that The Raid US has a director, and it's Patrick Hughes. Hughes' first feature was Red Hill, a 2010 crime thriller starring Ryan Kwanten, while his second will be The Expendables 3, the action ensemble due out later this year. The Raid remake also has a writer - Brad Ingelsby, who wrote the downbeat drama Out Of The Furnace.
We're intrigued to see what the pair do with Evans' ruthlessly pared-back original premise, which saw elite cops storm a high-rise building controlled by a vicious gangster and his army of cronies. After all, many would argue that Pete Travis'Dredd (coincidentally) trod similar ground. Will Screen Gems want to change the plot around a little to distance the remake from both that film and the original - as Martin Scorsese did with The Departed, his remake of Infernal Affairs?
More news on The Raid US remake as we get it. The Raid 2 is out on the 11th April in the UK.
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