Nothing is definite yet, but it’s being widely reported that Martin Scorsese is lobbying to direct the North American remake of Hong Kong blockbuster Infernal Affairs. The original was a masterpiece of crime film starring Tony Leung as a deep cover police officer infiltrating the mob and Andy Lau as a mob member living as a mole within the police department. The duo become aware of each other through the course of one operation and a cat-and-mouse game of who can out the other first results. The only definite piece of cast information thus far is that Brad Pitt (who lobbied hard to bring the film to North America) will be on board both as a producer and in either the Lau or Leung role.
See the news links here:
Coming Soon
Ananova
Empire Online
Zap2It
For those who want to see at least a partial version of the original, Miramax will be doing their normal hack and slash job and putting it into theaters in late summer. If they cut any of Tony Leung’s incredible performance or mess with the Pang’s edit job I will be most displeased …
Yeah, I think Scorsese’s a pretty good choice for this. Definitely the best of the old guard, anyway. I hope they pick a good editor, though, as the way scenes were intercut was really integral to the original … with any luck they’ll just bring the Pang brothers back on board for that what with them starting to break into North America anyway. But that would make too much sense. So it’s not gonna happen.
Perfect. After watching the 1st version, I can’t think of a better guy to direct a North American one. His style would fit in perfectly with the mood of the story.