Not every Hong Kong filmmaker has found success making the transition to Hollywood, but the legendary John Woo has done it better than anyone The Face/Off, Mission: Impossible II, and Broken Arrow director is returning to the States for a remake of a film he knows quite well: his 1989 Chow Yun-fat classic, The Killer!
Peacock has announced that Woo will direct a “reimagining” of The Killer that Universal Pictures will release on the streamer in 2023. The original film starred Chow Yun-fat as an assassin on the verge of retirement. When a shootout goes wrong and damages the eys of a young woman, he takes on one last dangerous job to get the money to pay for the operation she needs to fix it.
The Killer is a stone cold classic, and Woo has his own big shoes to fill here. It’ll be interesting to see the way they go with casting. It could easily be a role for someone like Liam Neeson or Jason Statham, or they could shoot for a younger audience who may less familiar with the original. In 2018, Universal had Woo attached to a version that would star Lupita Nyong’o, but she is not mentioned right now.
This will be Woo’s first U.S. film since 2003’s Paycheck, which was…well, not great.
