Korean Remake Fever

It seems Hollywood is well aware that South Korea makes some of the most engaging, freaky, genre-defying, chock full of life films around.

The above movies are set to be remade…but wait…it’s a little more complicated.

Will Smith and Steven Spielberg are names being tossed about for an Oldboy remake, but word around the web is they are remaking the manga, not the actual movie.

Steven Spielberg is generally known for being a bit too cuddly (witness the remarkably over-wrought convuluted ending to A.I.).

And Will Smith, while certainly someone with a knack for picking interesting projects, has been making half of awesome movies lately (both I am Legend and Hancock open strong and lose steam considerably by the end).

Then there’s The Host. Anyone who actually saw this movie surely picked up on the strong anti-American sentiment (American arrogance creates the monster). So the fact that the movie is being remade in English, likely for American audiences in large part is really patently ridiculous. It’s also a safe bet American audiences will not be able to handle (or at least will be deemed unable to handle by the studio) The Host’s whiplash genre shifts from drama to tragedy to dark comedy.

Both movies are widely available in their original versions in the States. See em before Hollywood produces an inferior neutered version.