It was announced last month that Red Hill and The Expendables 3 director Patrick Hughes would be bringing an American remake of Gareth Evans’ The Raid to the big screen in the near future. ComingSoon.net got the chance to speak with Hughes recently (you can read our full report from the set of The Expendables 3 by clicking here), and he had some interesting comments about his version of the popular Indonesian film.
“We have a really, really interesting take on that film,” Hughes told us. “One thing, obviously the original just blew my mind and I was fortunate enough to catch up with Gareth Evans in LA at the premiere of ‘The Raid 2.’ The thing that blew my mind with that film was the aesthetics and the fight sequences but also the simplicity of the premise, and there’s so much you can do with that. So our take on it is really interesting and I feel like if anything what I want to do is elevate the emotional aspect of it, and I think those are my favorite action films of all time when you can balance the action and the emotion, and what he did with his first ‘Raid’ was phenomenal..”
He added: “Certainly, we’re not there to recreate that film beat for beat, with the set up we’re following a DEA task team, which was implemented by the Bush administration after September 11th when they realized that terrorism and the drug trade were so closely aligned. So they set up a DEA task team that’s six units and they work across borders and sort of act like Navy SEALS. You never read about it, you never hear about it, but they go on these missions. So that’s a really interesting take and a really nice premise and also what’s interesting on this take on it is the clash of cultures and the clash of martial arts, the fighting styles, which is something that’s going to be a lot of fun when we’ve really started pre-vizzing stuff.”
The remake will be written by Brad Ingelsby and produced by XYZ Films, which produced the original film as well. Evans will executive produce the project with the original film’s fight choreographers also attached.
