If you know anything at all about David Ayer, chances are you have a strong opinion about him. His movies are pretty divisive, entirely male-driven thrillers either about corrupt cops (Training Day, End of Watch) or battle-hardened soldiers (Fury) with very little in-between for most of his career. Lately he’s branched out a little, bringing that same masculine sensibility to Suicide Squad and Bright, with mixed results. Ayer recently signed on to a remake of The Dirty Dozen, a classic and one of the ultimate dude movies, and it sounds like this is going to be polarizing, as well.
This will come as a shock to absolutely nobody, but Ayer hopes his Dirty Dozen remake will turn into a gigantic, blockbuster franchise, and is setting it up in the mold of Mission: Impossible and Fast & Furious. He tells Collider…
“I think it’s just an opportunity for a great ensemble action franchise,” said Ayer. “I’ll have a really solid lead character, and I see it in the vein of the ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies, or the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise, for which I wrote the first one. It’s like anything, you build an amazing family of characters, and then you watch them bounce off of each other and drive each other crazy.”
Originally released in 1967, The Dirty Dozen starred a who’s who of tough-guy actors including Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Jim Brown as US Army prisoners sent on a suicide mission during WWII. Ayer was asked what his modern update brings to the table, and basically he just sounds like he’s pitching a new Fast & Furious flick. To be fair, he did write the first one way back in 2001…
“I think it’s more open and exciting. For me, World War II is the Holy War. To do a more fun, comedic version of that war, I don’t think I could pull that off. But absolutely, I can do that present day, and have that fun and anarchy and wildness, and have modern characters with incredible diversity and real voices.”
It’s interesting because Ayer really does seem to be grasping to launch a franchise of his own. He’s been at the launch of two of them (The Fast and the Furious, Suicide Squad) only to be dumped as they moved on to sequels. The Dirty Dozen would, presumably, his to craft and build if it’s a success.
