Scorsese gets Kurosawa remake in gear (The Guardian)

Martin Scorsese is one film-maker who doesn't make "remake" sound like a dirty word. The director of The Departed and Cape Fear has long been interested in reworking Akira Kurosawa's 1963 thriller High and Low (conocida en español como "Cielo e infierno" o "El infierno del odio"), and now looks set to make this reinvention a reality. Scorsese isn't directing, however: he's handed that task to Mike Nichols, Variety reports.

The project looks to be a high-profile, classy production all round. As well as the Oscar-winning credentials of Nichols and Scorsese, Glengarry Glen Ross screenwriter David Mamet has also been brought on board to adapt the original.

Seven Samurai director Kurosawa's film was actually based on an American novel by Ed McBain. It centres on a businessman who has mortgaged all he owns to raise the money for a crucial business deal. The executive is then told that his son has been kidnapped and prepares to hand over everything he has in return for the boy's safe return. The twist in the tale is that the snatched child turns out to be the offspring of his driver, who the kidnappers mistook for their real quarry. The businessman then has to decide if the boy's life is worth sacrificing everything he owns.

Scorsese commissioned the script from Mamet in 1999, so this one has been a long time coming. He will now take an executive producer's role on the project.

1954's Seven Samurai is the most famous of Kurosawa's films to get the Hollywood remake treatment (as 1960's The Magnificent Seven), but the Japanese master has been a regular source for US directors. His 1950 crime tale Rashomon was remade by Martin Ritt as 1960's The Outrage, starring Paul Newman, and Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks is currently developing a new version of 1952's Ikiru. Meanwhile, the Weinstein Company is eyeing another remake of Seven Samurai itself.