October
29
Rudin Watch: Nichols and Mamet to remake Kurosawa's High and Low
Scott Rudin is on a roll. He has three possible Oscar contenders in the mix, Doubt, Revolutionary Road and The Reader (which he walked away from after a legendary tussle with Harvey Weinstein), plus ten or so pics in the pipeline for 2009 and 2010.
Here's a classic Rudin story: the hands-on producer (who won the best picture Oscar for No Country for Old Men) agreed to give John Patrick Shanley's Doubt to the AFI Fest after Paramount pulled The Soloist in favor of a March opening. But the fest would have to project a digital copy of the film, which won't have final prints ready until next week. Rudin persuaded key L.A. press to agree not to review Doubt until they screened the final film in 35 mm. And he was so appalled at the way the digital projection looked on the curved giant Cinerama Dome screen that he made sure the film will show on three flat screens at the Arclight.
As it happens, two Rudin stories are in the paper today: he's producing High and Low, a remake of the Akira Kurosawa 1963 Toshiro Mifune classic, to be directed by Mike Nichols from David Mamet's script at Miramax, and he's featured in our 75th anniversary package.
Subscribe to this blog's feed
NOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why can't Americans come up with their own ideas anymore???
Posted by: DeafBrownTrashPunk | October 29, 2008 at 05:37 PM
Well, Kurosawa's HIGH AND LOW was originally based on Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novel, "King's Ransom" (just as Kurosawa's classic samurai film YOJIMBO was based on Dashiell Hammett's 1929 detective novel, "Red Harvest"), so the question becomes one of what Nichols' and Mamet's plans are. Do they adapt "King's Ransom" and call it a remake of HIGH AND LOW to trade on Kurosawa's name value? Or, as I suspect is the case, are they taking Kurosawa's script (which was far superior to McBain's novel) and simply transplanting it to an American city? (Much the way Scorsese's THE DEPARTED took a Hong Kong cops-and-triad story called INFERNAL AFFAIRS and transplanted it to Boston.)
Posted by: Brian | October 30, 2008 at 09:39 AM